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Team:Leicester/Team
From 2012.igem.org
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| - | |The team consists of a computer scientist, | + | |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. |
|[[Image:Leicester_logo.png|400px|thumb|left]] | |[[Image:Leicester_logo.png|400px|thumb|left]] | ||
Revision as of 08:34, 15 July 2012
| 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. |  |
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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). 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. 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. |  From left to right: Will Harrison, Nathan Hanna, Anthony Cox, Chris Morton, Luke Thompson, Grace Hodson, Neil Nathwani, Sir Alec Jeffreys, Philip Higgs. |
| Team Leicester |
Meet the team
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Supervisors :
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What we did
(Provide proper attribution for all work)
