Revision as of 18:54, 3 August 2012

Team:UC Davis - 2012.igem.org

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Welcome

Welcome to iGEM 2012 at UC Davis!

This year's UC Davis team is composed of ten undergraduates, two advisors, and a graduate student. We come from different areas of study, but we're all working together on this year's synthetic biology project. Due to the global impact of plastic pollution, we have decided to focus on biodegradation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET is a commonly and widely used plastic, but only a small percentage of them are recycled, meaning a majority of the trash ends up in landfills and the oceans. It is a global issue, and achieving our goal would have a big impact on the issue of plastic degradation.

Our Project/Abstract

Project Description:

A significant environmental problem facing the world entails the accumulation of plastic polymer waste products, both on land and offshore. The ecological, political, and economic repercussions of plastic accumulation have affected populations and industries alike in a significant manner, however, the technological development and profitability of investment in the business of plastic degradation has stunted the growth of such an institution. Our project aims to conduct an in depth analysis of the multitude of factors that would influence an industry centered around plastic degradation. Our collegiate iGEM team is currently engaged in producing an E. Coli that degrades PET plastic and goes further to break down byproducts, and we would similarly like to use this as a model for an economic and business analysis. Likewise, we also aim to generate a set of tools and guidelines that future iGEM teams can use to assess the realistic marketability of their project. We would like this toolkit to be applicable to a wide range of products under the field of synthetic biology, with the intent that teams and groups can take the product of laboratory based biological engineering and critically look at its real world application. In short, we wish to make successful commercial endeavors out of scientific academic work.

@@ Line 458: / Line 458: @@
 <h1>Our Project/Abstract   </h1>
-<p>We hope to accomplish:</p><br>
-This year, our team hopes to successfully insert the gene for cutinase, an
-enzyme that has been shown to degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), into
-several strains of E. coli. PET is a major kind of plastic used today, and we hope to
-overproduce cutinase within the E. coli and secrete the enzyme into the extracellular
-region to degrade the PET. We hope to test the cutinase out on several kinds of
-PET, such as films from scientific companies and plastic bottles, and test how much
-each is broken down. We also hope to improve the cutinase itself through targeted
-mutations and codon optimization, through programs such as Foldit and SWISS-
-MODEL.<br><br>
-Through our research, we have learned that with cutinase, PET degrades into
-terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol. While TPA does not appear to be
-harmful, ethylene glycol is a toxic substance. We hope to degrade ethylene glycol as
-much as possible by enhancing the promoters that express the degradative enzymes
-involved. After ethylene glycol is degraded, we hope to redirect all further
-byproducts into glycolysis within E. coli so that the project would sustain itself.
-We also hope to perform a complete economic and environmental analysis
-of our project to see how feasible it would be in real life and to assess the impact it
-could have.<br><br>
-Lastly, we need to ensure that our parts do not have common restriction
-sites within them so they can be used properly in the standard BioBrick format. We
-hope to create and characterize a part family and to end up with a series of BioBrick
-standard parts to submit to the Parts Registry.
 <br><br>
-<p>What We Have Done So Far:</p><br>
+<p>Project Description:</p><br>
-We have outlined a plan for the engineering of the PET degradation circuit
+A significant environmental problem facing the world entails the accumulation of plastic polymer waste products, both on land and offshore. The ecological, political, and economic repercussions of plastic accumulation have affected populations and industries alike in a significant manner, however, the technological development and profitability of investment in the business of plastic degradation has stunted the growth of such an institution. Our project aims to conduct an in depth analysis of the multitude of factors that would influence an industry centered around plastic degradation. Our collegiate iGEM team is currently engaged in producing an E. Coli that degrades PET plastic and goes further to break down byproducts, and we would similarly like to use this as a model for an economic and business analysis. Likewise, we also aim to generate a set of tools and guidelines that future iGEM teams can use to assess the realistic marketability of their project. We would like this toolkit to be applicable to a wide range of products under the field of synthetic biology, with the intent that teams and groups can take the product of laboratory based biological engineering and critically look at its real world application. In short, we wish to make successful commercial endeavors out of scientific academic work.<br>
-and we ordered a synthesized sequence for cutinase. We asked for separate strains
-of E. coli from Yale and Barcelona.<br><br>
-We learned basic lab protocols, such as ligation, transformation, and
-digestion and we have worked on the Wiki.<br><br>
-We have done extensive research on past attempts to degrade PET and other
-plastics. We even visited our local landfill to talk about current issues with waste
-degradation, such as control over concentrations of methane.<br><br>
-Two of our members (Nick and Mattan) attended the Biomedical Engineering
-Entrepreneurship Academy to be better informed about the economic implications
-of our project, and what companies might be looking for in terms of a completed
-product.<br><br>
-Lastly, we’ve had team bonding, over sushi buffets, ice cream sandwiches and
-laughs.<br>