From 2012.igem.org
This is a template page. READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS.
You are provided with this team page template with which to start the iGEM season. You may choose to personalize it to fit your team but keep the same "look." Or you may choose to take your team wiki to a different level and design your own wiki. You can find some examples
HERE.
You MUST have all of the pages listed in the menu below with the names specified. PLEASE keep all of your pages within your teams namespace.
| You can write a background of your team here. Give us a background of your team, the members, etc. Or tell us more about something of your choosing.
|
|
|
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).
We intend to find and extract the genes involved in the pathway of degrading Expanded Polystyrene (EPS). We can then use this to develop a new pathway involving modifications to existing enzymes able to degrade aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons to fit polystyrene and its derivatives into the active sites. The bacteria strain that we insert these new genes into should then be able to degrade polystyrene at a higher rate than natural bacteria.
|  Your team picture |
|
| photo with Sir Alec Jeffreys
|
"
