Azo dyes

Azo dyes are widely used in printing and dyeing industry. Our colorful clothes are stained by such dyes.

However

About 10% to 15% of the azo dyes are discharged with sewage without proper treatment. Some of the azo dyes and their metabolic intermediates are hard to be degraded. New efficient approach of azo dye wastewater is urgent to solve the problem.

Convenient methods

Ozone is used to oxidize the azo bond. However, ozone production consumes lots of electricity, meanwhile it requires complicated and pricy equipments. Also it needs complicated and pricy equipments.

Introducing Mtr system to facilitate degradation

We chose to build our system in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 due to its capacity to reduce azo dyes. The efficiency can be improved greatly by introducing Metal Reductase (Mtr) system which will enhance the extracellular electron transfer.

aNAT lift the harm of aromatic amines to the bacteria

Aromatic amines N-acetyl transferase (aNAT) can reduce the harm of aromatic amines towards the growing and functioning bacteria.

Kill switch ensures biosafety

We use the parts of the kill switch designed by Unesp Brazil 2018 to make sure our bacteria cannot escape into environment.

Glucose utilizing

Glucose is a better choice as carbon source than lactate, but S. oneidensis MR-1 is disable to utilize glucose because of the lack of a critical enzyme, hexokinase. Therefore, we decided to knock in HXK and an assistant protein(GLF) to make glucose utilizable for S. oneidensis MR-1.