Team:Leicester

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Revision as of 08:23, 15 July 2012

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The team consists of a computer scientist (Emily), two organic chemists (Reema and Mohamed) , One Biological Scientist (Christopher), two geneticists (Anthony and Nathan), and three biochemists (William, Luke and Philip). The whole team have been inducted into the Genetics Department at the University of Leicester. This means everybody is cleared to work in the lab and all of us can contribute to the hands-on experiments.

experiments.

Chris Morton - Team Leader
Anthony Cox - Vice Team Leader
Philip Higgs - Treasurer
Luke Thompson - Lab Leader
Nathan Hanna - Webmaster
Will Harrison - Chief Fundraiser
Emily Halsey - Bioinformatician
Reema Naran - Organic Chemist
Mohammed Idres - Organic Chemist

The roles above were allocated to make the workload lighter, and to give everyone a specific part to play in the team. This way everyone can be working at the same time without clashing for space in the lab.

Our project is about trying to reduce the amount of Expanded PolyStyrene (EPS) waste going into landfill sites by engineering a bacteria to degrade this long lived material. Some bacteria have been found to form biofilms on polystyrene, indicating that it may be being degraded by micro-organisms, albeit at a very slow rate. We have several different parts to our project, including a citizen science experiment (CSE).

Over the summer the team intend to isolate the genes involved in the EPS degradation pathway. These can then be used to develop an improved pathway, for example by making modifications to the enzymes that act on polystyrene. One approach is to modify existing enzymes that are able to degrade aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons to accommodate polystyrene into their active sites. The bacteria that have these new genes inserted should then be able to degrade polystyrene at a much higher rate than naturally occurring bacteria.

If we can build a bacteria that can degrade the polystyrene it could potentially be applied to landfill sites to degrade the polystyrene in situ, reducing the amount of this long-lasting waste. Alternatively the bacteria could be used as a first step in polystyrene recycling by engineering it to produce chemical intermediates that slot into other synthetic pathways, reclaiming the valuable fossil hydrocarbons the polystyrene was originally made from.

From left to right: Will Harrison, Nathan Hanna, Anthony Cox, Chris Morton, Luke Thompson, Grace Hodson, Neil Nathwani, Sir Alec Jeffreys, Philip Higgs.

Photo with Sir Alec Jeffreys

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 {|align="justify"
-|The team consists of a computer scientist, 2 organic chemists, 3 genetecists, and 3 biochemists. The whole team has been insured by the genetics department to work in the lab so all of us can contribute to the actual experiments.
+|The team consists of a computer scientist (Emily), two organic chemists (Reema and Mohamed) , One Biological Scientist (Christopher), two geneticists (Anthony and Nathan), and three biochemists (William, Luke and Philip). The whole team have been inducted into the Genetics Department at the University of Leicester. This means everybody is cleared to work in the lab and all of us can contribute to the hands-on experiments.
+ experiments.
@@ Line 37: / Line 38: @@
-<br/>The jobs were allocated to make the workload lighter, and so everyone has a specific part to play in team, and so everyone can be working at the same time without clashing for work or space in the lab.
+<br/>The roles above were allocated to make the workload lighter, and to give everyone a specific part to play in  the team. This way everyone can be working at the same time without clashing for space in the lab.
 |[[Image:Leicester_logo.png|400px|thumb|left]]
@@ Line 43: / Line 45: @@
 |
-Our project is about trying to reduce the waste going into landfill sites by engineering a bacteria to degrade polystyrene. Some bacteria have been found to form biofilms on polystyrene, indicating that polystyrene may be being degraded, albeit at a very slow rate. We have several different parts to our project, including a citizen science experiment (CSE).
+Our project is about trying to reduce the amount of Expanded PolyStyrene (EPS) waste going into landfill sites by engineering a bacteria to degrade this long lived material. Some bacteria have been found to form biofilms on polystyrene, indicating that it may be being degraded by micro-organisms, albeit at a very slow rate. We have several different parts to our project, including a citizen science experiment (CSE).
-Over the summer the team intends to find and extract the genes involved in the pathway of degrading Expanded Polystyrene (EPS). This can then be used to develop an improved pathway, involving modifications to the enzymes that act on polystyrene, and the existing enzymes able to degrade aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons to fit polystyrene and its derivatives into the active sites. The bacteria strain that has these new genes inserted should then be able to degrade polystyrene at a higher rate than natural bacteria.
+Over the summer the team intend to isolate the genes involved in the EPS degradation pathway. These can then be used to develop an improved pathway,  for example by making modifications to the enzymes that act on polystyrene. One approach is to modify existing enzymes that are able to degrade aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons to accommodate polystyrene into their active sites. The bacteria that have these new genes inserted should then be able to degrade polystyrene at a much higher rate than naturally occurring bacteria.
-We also intend to model several enzymes and mutate them to accept polystyrene and other intermediates in the pathway more readily into their active site, to potentially create a new pathway to at the very least make the polystyrene soluble.
+If we can build a bacteria that can degrade the polystyrene it could potentially be applied to landfill sites to degrade the polystyrene in situ, reducing the amount of this long-lasting waste. Alternatively the bacteria could be used as a first step in polystyrene recycling by engineering it to produce chemical intermediates that slot into other synthetic pathways, reclaiming the valuable fossil hydrocarbons the polystyrene was originally made from.
-This new strain that can degrade the polystyrene could then potentially be applied to landfill sites to degrade the polystyrene reducing the amount of long-lasting waste and saving the ground from long-term pollution, as well as being used by companies to stop polystyrene from being put into landfill sites in the future.
 |[[Image:Leicester_team.png|left|frame|From left to right: Will Harrison, Nathan Hanna, Anthony Cox, Chris Morton, Luke Thompson, Grace Hodson, Neil Nathwani, Sir Alec Jeffreys, Philip Higgs.]]