Team:NYMU-Taipei

Our iGEM Project:

* Nitrogen Metabolism

With an eye to combat the environmental issues related to nitrogen oxides, we have designed circuits that can produce nitrogen oxides reductases and transcriptional regulators into our organisms so that harmful nitrogen oxides can be reduced to nitrogen. Combined with the sulfur metabolism pathway and Calvin cycle that are inherent in cyanobacteria, we provide an eco-friendly, multi-function solution to the air pollution problem.

This is a promising project with huge commercialized potential since the mass production of bioreactors full of our organisms is foreseeable. What is more interesting, with the help of division inhibitor, gene for invasion, we can install our designation into human cells as artificial organelles and grant human being the ability to survive in extreme environments such as Venus without wearing bulky space suits.

* Sulfide Metabolism

We all know that sulfide dioxides are one of the pollutants in urban area globally. In addition, sulfide compounds also exist on Venus. Therefore, we first think about how to reduce the sulfide dioxides in the atmosphere on earth; then we can move our project further on Venus.

Our plan is to develop a system which can reduce the SO2 into H2S using the genes in microorganisms like sulfate reducing bacteria, such as Desulfovibrio desulfuricans. After we acquire H2S, we may use bacteria such as Oscillatoria limnetica, Rhodobacter capsulatus, and Cyanobacteria PCC7002 which contain Sulfide-quinone reductase(SQR).By using SQR, we can then use H2S as the reducing energy and can get carbohydrates such as glucose, and can provide them as the energy for creatures to survive.

* Symbiosis

Every year, iGEMers create plenty of bioparts. They code for peptides, proteins or composite parts for all kinds of functions. However, they are just DNA sequences. But what if we create parts at the scale of organelles? With this approach, we can implant any cells into the host depending on what kinds of functions we hope to see in it. Comparing with transforming cells using merely simple DNA sequence, implanting new organelles can bring more complicated functions and more precise controlling systems. We can dream about making eukaryote to fix nitrogen, reduced sulfite, or even making animals to photosynthesize! Or we can create organisms that can live in other planets!