Team:USP SaoCarlos-Brazil/Description
IARA PROJECT
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Our project look for create an organism that is able of reducing the concentration of heavy metals in aqueous solutions, focusing on mercury. We’ll intend to induce expression and secretion of a protein which is able to bind with the heavy metals and bacterial biofilm formation, in E.coli cells.
PROJECT INSPIRATION
We went through a process of searching and discussing possible problems that we could solve using Synthetic Biology and we noticed that all the team has affection for environmental causes and bioremediation. Then, we remembered two environmental "disasters" that had national repercussions: the rupture of the dams of Brumadinho-MG (2019) and Mariana-MG (2015). On both occasions, the rupture of the dams caused pollution with heavy metals of the Paraopeba river (Brumadinho), Doce river (Mariana) and the affluent rivers in each region. [1] Researches using aliquots of water from these rivers showed that some of the heavy metals in the highest concentration were mercury and lead.
We had the idea of transforming a bacteria that it is able to capture heavy metals. We were inspired by the 2014 project from another Brazilian team, UFAM_Brazil [2]. Also, we wanted to facilitate the removal of the bacteria from the environment and for this, we had the idea of inducing the formation of a bacterial biofilm, since the bacteria will all be in the biofilm community. Another interesting point of our project is that in order to increase the survival of the bacteria: the heavy metals will not get trapped inside them, but will bind to the metal-capturing proteins that will be secreted and will be adhered to the biofilm by a tag attached to the biofilm cellulose, which is one of the main components of the biofilm matrix that will be formed.
PROJECT GOALS
The main goals of our project are to ensure expression and secretion of the protein that captures heavy metals and also to effectively induce bacterial biofilm formation. For this, after an extensive period of research and discussion, we formulated some biological circuits that would be able to express and secrete the protein separately and others that are capable of guaranteeing the simultaneous expression and secretion of the protein, and the formation of the biofilm. In this way could facilitate the diagnosis of possible bacterial transformation errors.
In addition, to achieve the goal of performing protein secretion, we had to add in our circuit components of a protein complex responsible for secretion that has a good chance of being adaptable to the chassis we intend to use. In order to induce the formation of biofilm, we added in the circuit a protein that presents the GGDEF domain capable of increasing the level of C-di-GMP present in the bacteria, which in turn will be responsible for inducing biofilm formation.
WHY IARA PROJECT?
The process of choosing the name of our chimera and our project took a few months. Our team wanted a name that could reflect the motivation that we had and, in addition, identify our team as young Brazilian scientists seeking to solve problems in their country.
Seeking national inspirations, we found in Brazilian folklore a character extremely well known in all regions of Brazil: Iara. The Iara folk legend was born from a junction of European myths with traces of indigenous culture, and had great nationalist prominence in literary works by leading Brazilian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [3]
Iara is a character with an indigenous name (from Tupi-guarani means: “one who lives in the waters”) [4] who is also commonly called “Mãe d'Água” (in English: Mother of the Waters). In folk legend, she was a warrior india who was turned into a mermaid after being unfairly harmed and has since lived in rivers to protect the waters and the animals.
Because of this, this folk character carries a stigma of the protector and guardian of the waters. With this in mind, our team decided to choose this name for our project because we aim to recover polluted water and try to avoid heavy metal pollution.
OUR BACTERIA: MAGNETOCARLOS
During the dissemination of our project we felt the need to create a mascot to represent our bacteria with the IARA-α chimera. We would like the mascot to represent where we came from (São Carlos-SP, Brazil) and also to represent the purpose of our project, which is to capture heavy metals.
Thus arose the Escherichia carlos (as a pun for the bacteria we chose to use: Escherichia coli), which we call Magnetocarlos to allude to the binding of metals.
REFERENCES
- [1] Brumadinho e Mariana: Barragens que causam desastres ambientais! | GTech - Soluções Ambientais. GTech. Available in: gtechsolucoes.com.br/brumadinho-e-mariana-barragens-desastres-ambientais.
- [2] Team: UFAM Brazil 2014.
- [3] CASEMIRO, S. R. A lenda da Iara: nacionalismo literário e folclore. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo. Departamento de letras Clássicas e Vernáculas. São Paulo - 2012.
- [4] OLIVEIRA, R. P. S. B.; SANTOS, J. B.; AZEVEDO, K. S. A Literatura no Amazonas: 1954-2010. 1ª Edição. Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital - 2017.
