Team:University of Lethbridge

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Revision as of 06:13, 3 July 2008

About Us

A nice little blurb about us

Our Project: "Bacuum" Cleaner

The tailing ponds created when water is used to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands or other mining operations pose a major environmental dilemma. How can we isolate the tailings and byproducts of the extraction process? Despite the efforts of the corporations responsible, chemicals can leech from the ponds into the surrounding ground water and soil. These toxic and often corrosive water beds not only affect the immediate land and water environment but also cause severe repercussions to larger ecosystems as much of the wildlife relies on getting their food and water from the now disrupted bionetwork. The exact composition of tailing ponds is highly complex, often laced with heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, and are difficult and expensive to filter or degrade. One powerful example is the high level of mercury in our fresh water fish, stemming from the tailing ponds of gold mining operations and the refinement of chloralkali metals.

It is our goal to create a bacterial vacuum cleaner, or “Bacuum”, which will seek out and degrade a particular harmful hydrocarbon. We intend to use the theophylline riboswitch we worked on last year as a platform for directed evolution to create a novel riboswitch capable of binding a particular aromatic hydrocarbon or class of hydrocarbons. The riboswitch will be used to control expression of the motility protein cheZ in E. coli at low concentrations, thus directing the bacterium towards local areas of high ligand concentration. At a threshold level, a second riboswitch will be used to activate a pathway capable of metabolizing the aromatic hydrocarbons. Ultimatley, the resulting product will be funneled into an anabolic pathway, such as the TCA cycle or fatty acid biosynthesis, from which an alternative fuel source can be produced, thereby turning toxic tailings ponds into a bioreactor with the help of a self-guiding "search and destroy" bacterial operative.

See last years team page!

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-The tailings ponds used to house discarded mining refuse from the oil refineries pose a major environmental dilemma. The problem arises with being unable to collect and degrade the compounds which make up these toxic soups. These toxic and often corrosive water beds not only affect the local environment but can also cause severe repercussions to other ecosystems as much of the wildlife relies on getting their food and water from the now disrupted bionetwork. These tailings ponds are often laced with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals, such as toxic aromatic hydrocarbons which are difficult to breakdown. Despite the efforts of the corporations responsible, some of these chemicals can leech into and contaminate the surrounding ground water and soil. One particularly powerful example of this is this Mercury levels in our fresh water fish, which seems to stem from the tailing ponds of gold mining operations and the refinement of chloralkali metals.
+The tailing ponds created when water is used to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands or other mining operations pose a major environmental dilemma. How can we isolate the tailings and byproducts of the extraction process? Despite the efforts of the corporations responsible, chemicals can leech from the ponds into the surrounding ground water and soil. These toxic and often corrosive water beds not only affect the immediate land and water environment but also cause severe repercussions to larger ecosystems as much of the wildlife relies on getting their food and water from the now disrupted bionetwork. The exact composition of tailing ponds is highly complex, often laced with heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, and are difficult and expensive to filter or degrade. One powerful example is the high level of mercury in our fresh water fish, stemming from the tailing ponds of gold mining operations and the refinement of chloralkali metals.
-It is our goal to create a bacterial vacuum cleaner, “Bacuum”, which will seek out and begin to degrade some of these harmful hydrocarbons. We intend to use our theophylline riboswitch from last year, to activate the motility protein cheZ in E. coli at low concentrations, thus directing the bacterium up a chemical gradient. At higher concentrations, a second theophylline riboswitch will be used to activate a pathway capable of metabolizing aromatic hydrocarbons. One potential result would be that the degradation product is then funneled into either the TCA cycle or is used in the biosynthesis of potentially useful fatty acids. The final objective would be to use these fatty acids to produce an alternative fuel source, thus using the tailings ponds as a platform for a bioreactor.
+It is our goal to create a bacterial vacuum cleaner, or “Bacuum”, which will seek out and degrade a particular harmful hydrocarbon. We intend to use the theophylline riboswitch we worked on last year as a platform for directed evolution to create a novel riboswitch capable of binding a particular aromatic hydrocarbon or class of hydrocarbons. The riboswitch will be used to control expression of the motility protein cheZ in E. coli at low concentrations, thus directing the bacterium towards local areas of high ligand concentration. At a threshold level, a second riboswitch will be used to activate a pathway capable of metabolizing the aromatic hydrocarbons. Ultimatley, the resulting product will be funneled into an anabolic pathway, such as the TCA cycle or fatty acid biosynthesis, from which an alternative fuel source can be produced, thereby turning toxic tailings ponds into a bioreactor with the help of a self-guiding "search and destroy" bacterial operative.
-Furthermore, using directed evolutionary methods, we intend to create not only a second theophylline riboswitch which is capable of binding theophylline with a different binding affinity, but also hope to use this to engineer a novel riboswitch. This new riboswitch would be capable of binding similar aromatic compounds in the hopes of determining a binding motif which can be used to direct the chemotaxis of ''E. coli'' towards the hydrocarbon of interest in the tailings ponds themselves. Thus, generating a self-guiding "search and destroy" bacterial operative.