Team:MichiganState/Inspiration

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Inspiration

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Inspiration

We want to do our part in making the Earth more sustainable.

Synthetic biology holds limitless opportunities to improve the world. There are many noble pursuits, but after substantial consideration, we decided to focus on the very vessel that supports us, the Earth.

In the Spring, Michigan State University hosted an environmental event, Challenging the Consumption Economy: Points of Intervention Tour, which spoke to the damaging impacts of consumer waste and to empower individuals to see they can be a part of the collective solution. Members of the 2019 iGEM team were in attendance and realized they could not shy away from their duty to be a part of the solution. The panel of accredited environmentalists spoke about how they used their skills to improve the current state of our Earth such as an artist using recycled materials, working in public activism, leading off the governmental recycling sector, and perhaps undergraduates conducting research. A point of intervention is where an intentional action can interrupt functioning systems and make way for change. The MSU 2019 iGEM realized that they needed to find their point of intervention, to stop this never-ending cycle.

Our Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and our team is committed to fighting global warming. Each effort is valiant, but we wanted to combat one of the major contributors of methane to our depreciating environment, landfills. According to the EPA, landfills are the third leading cause of human-related methane emissions.² When organic material in deep portions of the landfill decomposes, methane is emitted instead of carbon dioxide. This is due to the lack of oxygen, or anoxic conditions in which the material decomposes. Our team sought to decrease the amount of methane released into the atmosphere from this process. Some landfills have adapted Landfill Gas (LFG) Energy Projects intended to decrease this dissipating methane. However, many have failed to adopt a project for economic or infrastructure-related reasons.

Our biological approach aims to genetically modify a methanotrophic bacteria, Methylomicrobium alcaliphilum, to work under anoxic conditions. This particular strain has a pre-existing engineered pathway¹ that allows for the intake of methane and the output of 2,3-Butanediol, a precursor for biofuels. Creating biofuels from harmful greenhouse gases takes us one step closer to a greener future. A byproduct of methane metabolism is formate, which can build up in collection tubes to create an acidic environment, harmful to the cells. To prevent this, we will engineer a formate biosensor that will make the cells fluoresce when formate concentrations are high. This can increase efficiency and safety for the implementation of this methanotrophic bacteria. The spread of our inserted genes could cause unknown consequences, so we will introduce a toxin-antitoxin system to help minimize horizontal gene transfer. Synthetic biology has given us the tools to make our point of intervention and create a more sustainable world.

Sincerely,

Michigan State Univeristy iGEM Team

References

¹Kalyuzhnaya, M. G.; Yang, S.; Rozova, O. N.; Smalley, N. E.; Clubb, J.; Lamb, A.; Gowda, G. A. N.; Raftery, D.; Fu, Y.; Bringel, F.; Vuilleumier, S.; Beck, D. A. C.; Trotsenko, Y. A.; Khmelenina, V. N.; Lidstrom, M. E. Highly Efficient Methane Biocatalysis Revealed in a Methanotrophic Bacterium. Nature Communications 2013, 4.

²Basic Information about Landfill Gas. (2019, July 30). Retrieved August 17, 2019, from https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas