Team:SBS NY/index.html
Quick Measuring and elimination of Heavy Metal
Proudly designed by the Stony Brook School iGEM team
Our Project
Through a cross-examination between how different regulatory genes react to different metals under various concentrations, a measurement indicated by the intensity of flourescence under the flourescence detector, we are able to establish a model that approxiamates the concentration in the sample. We envision that more repetition of our measurement in the future will provide us with sufficient data to build an arithmetic, which will be installed on our device to precisely calculate the metal composition in a given soil sample, benefiting farmers, environmentalists, and the general public.
Possible implementation of our porject
MerR-like heavy metal induciable biosensors do have their limitations: it's accuracy is not compared to ICP-AES, ICP-AAS and ICP-MS. However when the exact number of concentration is not required, our biosensors will display it's advantage: It doesn't require a expensive and heavy instrument, but still can tell the order of magnitude for multiple heavy metal pollutants.
Human Practice
Our human practice has greatly influenced our purpose, design of experiment, and execution throughout the project. After we have initially decided on the main goal of our experiment, we have done a lot of online research by sending out surveys to the public and offline research like an investigation. From the results of our survey, we could tell that most people clearly know the severe situation of heavy metal pollution and would like to support our team. From our survey question about investigating the most hazardous metal in people’s minds, we confirmed the four kinds of heavy metals that we were going to focus on and try to eliminate- copper, zinc, mercury, and cadmium. As we started our experiment in the laboratory, our human practice group interviewed Professor Fu, who brought us some insights about how to make our method and product more competitive. Listening to Professor Fu’s suggestions, we decided that our project would be mainly focusing on how to detect the concentration of different heavy metals in the soil rather than eliminating it. That is because we have learned from him that all the current solutions for detecting heavy metals are time-consuming and require sophisticated machines. However, our method of using transformed bacteria to detect heavy metal concentration might be a huge breakthrough in this area since it would save a lot of time. Also, we decided that our product would be designed specifically for emergency situations which required result as quickly as possible, Therefore, we redesigned our experiment to fit the new goal of our project. After we got our result of the experiment, we have held lectures to publicize our new method of detecting heavy metal concentration in the soil. The responses and support we got from young teenagers warmly encouraged and confirmed our resolution to keep utilizing our limited power and knowledge to make this world better.
Q: Is your life greatly influenced by heavy metal pollution?
Q: What is the most hazardous heavy metal pollutant?
Q: Distribution of people which says there is heavy metal pollution in North, South, and East
Q: Are you willing to support our research?
“ We have lots of ways to test metal pollution level, but all of them take several days to analyze the data. Your method and equipment can shorten the time into a few hours, which is highly critical in emergency situations. ”
Modeling
Our goal of developing a method of measuring the level of heavy metal pollution requires an algorithm that reflects the concentration of certain metallic ions through the intensity of biochemistry reaction. Based on the experiments, we have a two-part plan for the modeling process. The first part of the modeling involves calculating the coefficients of single ligand (metallic ions in our case) functions. Since we have identified the influence of cross interactions, we use the Hill equation to improve the accuracy of the results of the coefficients of our function. Hill equation can accurately reflect the binding of ligands to macromolecules. For the second part, we combine four individual functions. In the case of the complexity of nonlinear scaling, we simplify the model by using the function at full or half action.
Measurement
In our experiment, we chose to measure multiple heavy metal cations in our soil sample based on the ability of our target genes to respond to the existence of heavy metals, with a low detection limit. Typically, ICP-MS or ICP-AES are used to measure a certain element - heavy metal in our case - which often takes a week or more to generate data, expensive in terms of both time and cost. Our way of measuring heavy metal cations, however, is way faster since it only takes a few hours to get the data that would otherwise not be obtained in the same period of time, which grants us the flexibility to respond to any possible error that might occur during our experiment. Therefore, in short, compared to the more typical methods of ICP-MS or ICP-AES, our way of measuring heavy metal is faster, more affordable, and more flexible.
Hardware and Software
Our team built a smart device for fast and accurate measurement of multiple heavy metal cations with an innovated all-solid-state green fluorescent protein (GFP) sensor, which is composed of a blue LED, an excitation filter, a sample slot, an emission filter and light to voltage converter or camera. With its built-in microcomputer and the assistance of our team’s mathematical models and software, it can monitor the heavy metal in the soil efficiently and accurately.
Combining our software and math model, it can offer multiple heavy metal ions’ readings. Raw Data and readings could be accessed remotely through the internet, this can allow researchers to bring a small set of kits to take a sample, resulting in faster and flexible responses.
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April
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Founding of the team
SBS-NY team founded; official registration for iGEM compeition
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The first meeting
Made plans for summer; assigned team positions and distributed works for participants
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May
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Proposals
We discussed potential topics for our research, and eventually decided to work on heavy metal pollution.
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Preparation for experiments
We accomplished background research about heavy metal pollution and prepared lab materials
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First social outreach
We sent out both online and offiline survey to the public, allowing us to get a general view of heavy metal pollution problem across the country
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June
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The start of our experiment
completion of molecular cloning and oligo synthesis
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Field trip
We went to a trip to a farming area in northern China and interviewed some farmers about their view regarding to heavy metal pollution. Incorporting their suggestion into our experiment, we specified four metals we needed to address.
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July
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Addition of CapB experiment
We conducted background research and accomplished design of CapB protein. Molecular cloning of CapB enzyme
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Function test of CadR, MerR, CueR, ZntR
We did fluroscent test on all four metals and determined the effects of enzymes
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August
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Interview
We interviewed a professor who specified in heavy metal pollution area and got some feedback from him about the application of our product
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Function test of CapB
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September
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Data analysis and modeling
We started to gather our data and disign models for our project
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Publicity of our project to high school students
We gave a lecture to high school students about our project
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The start of wiki
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October
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Improvement in modeling
We revised our modeling based on the results and incorporated them into design of hardware
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Poster