Team:UAAAN/Description
DESCRIPTION AND INSPIRATION
Our inspiration to participate in this competition came up when our leader Giovanni Torres when for a summer course about green biotechnology in Irapuato, Guanajuato, in there he met a Doctor who relate him about iGEM and what it was, later, when the semester begun, he spoke to his tutor, Dr. Armando Robledo, who said to him that this was a great opportunity to play a participate role to solve some problem that is damaging us or our environment and that’s who this team in the Autonomus Agronomic University Antonio Narro was formed.
In this edition we will compete in the energy category; Mexico must replace its dependence on fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas in its energy transition. Hydrogen is an option that is being analyzed by the international scientific community to engage in Renewable Energies, since it is an energy carrier that offers a solution to the intermittency of Renewable Energies and can be used to adapt to energy, in our project, we intend to use genes from a microalgae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), which are related to the production of hydrogen in its metabolism. Because it is much easier to handle microorganisms such as E. coli, we use this group of genes to genetically transform the DH5α strain.
In this way, our E. coli is a superproducer of hydrogen thanks to the genetic transformation to which it will be subjected, to be introduced to a Microbial Combustion Cell, in which the hydrogen produced will be used to generate electricity in a clean, economical way and sustainable.
References
[1]: Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2018, September 10). Antibiotic / Antimicrobial Resistance (AR / AMR). Retrieved October 9, 2018, from https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/index.html
[2]: World Health Organisation (WHO). (2018, February 15). Antimicrobial Resistance. Retrieved October 9, 2018, from https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/index.htmlhttp://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance
[3]: Ventola, C.L. (2015). The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis: Part 1: Causes and Threats. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 40(4), 277–283.
[4]: World Health Organisation (WHO). (2018, February 5). Antibiotic Resistance. Retrieved October 9, 2018, from http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance
[5]: World Health Organisation (WHO). (2016, September 19). Antimicrobial Resistance: Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. Retrieved October 9, 2018, from http://www.who.int/antimicrobial-resistance/global-action-plan/en/
[6]: Silver, L. L. (2011b). Challenges of Antibacterial Discovery. Clinical Microbiology Reviews, 24(1), 71–109. https://doi.org/10.1128/cmr.00030-10
[7]: Hu, C. (2018, 21 juli). Pharmaceutical companies are backing away from a growing threat that could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.nl/major-pharmaceutical-companies-dropping-antibiotic-projects-superbugs-2018-7/?international=true&r=US
[8]: Acar, J. F. (2000). Antibiotic synergy and antagonism. Medical Clinics of North America, 84(6), 1391-1406. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-7125(05)70294-7
[9]: Xu, X., Xu, L., Yuan, G., Wang, Y., Qu, Y., & Zhou, M. (2018). Synergistic combination of two antimicrobial agents closing each other’s mutant selection windows to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Scientific Reports, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25714-z
[10]: Yardley, D. A. (2013). Drug Resistance and the Role of Combination Chemotherapy in Improving Patient Outcomes. International Journal of Breast Cancer, 2013, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/137414
[11]: Katlama, C. (1996). Safety and Efficacy of Lamivudine-Zidovudine Combination Therapy in Antiretroviral-Naive Patients. JAMA, 276(2), 118. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1996.03540020040027