Establishing the Algae-Connection
Our Human Practices
As part of our human practice projects we decided to focus on two things. First and foremost, we wanted to collect as much know-how as possible, about algae cultivation and the potential algae has. This is why we visited various experts and exchanged ideas about our project. In the following texts we outlined what we learned and how we applied the collected know how in our project. For most people, science happens behind wall of big institutes or universities. Most of them see scientist on TV news or movies, but what is actually happening in the lab? To close this gap between scientists and public we organized various events to show what we are doing. Here we presented our ideas and visions, talked about synthetic biology and answered upcoming questions. Read more here: Education & Engagement
All we had to do to get inspired and improve our idea was gathering as much know-how as possible - so we sat together with scientists and companies and tried to implement their knowledge in our experimental set-up.
Algae Farm Kloetze
“The most important lungs of our planet are our oceans -
every second oxygen molecule we inhale is produced by algae”
This is why Joerg Ullmann, the owner of one of the biggest algae farms in Europe, is still fascinated by algae and has worked with them for more than 15 years. We visited him at his farm to understand how algae can be cultivated in such a big scale. Here he grows Spirulina and Chlorella which then can be processed, for example to food and cosmetic products. As we built a bioreactor for C. reinhardtii as well, it was very important to exchange ideas. We learned that not every algae needs the same cultivation and that there is not just one perfect way to cultivate algae in general. Every species is different in its demands - this is why we have/had to experiment how chlamy can be cultivated best.
MINT Microalgae Engineering
Algae can be cultivated in many different ways, which is why we tried to meet up with a variety of companies working with green algae.
MINT Enginnering focuses on the urban farming segment and creates bioreactors suitable for every kind of facades. Gunnar Muehlstadt, CEO of MINT, emphasized that the cultivation and the actual degradation of plastic by Chlamydomonas should happen in two different reactors. During our meeting we also learned about the costs of cultivation and what kind of of material we probably need. Moreover he offered us to test our algae on a larger scale with his systems, once our bioreactor is finished.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate is a social network, created for scientists all over the world.The platform allows researchers, students, and everyone who is interested, to connect with scientists, to exchange papers and to stay on track about the latest publications. Luckily, we were invited to talk about our project at the ResearchGate office in Berlin. Here, we met people from different professional and academic backgrounds working on the scientific knowledge transfer across disciplines and social groups. By talking to project management specialists, we learned how to streamline the processes of creating tasks, assigning due dates and responsible team members to them and how to finish these by their respective deadlines.
Wastewater Treatment Plant Ruhleben/Berlin
To understand how our local water gets filtered and cleaned we reached out to one of the six wastewater treatment plants in Berlin. Here we learned that 97% of all substances in wastewater get filtered while the remaining 3%, including microplastic particles, stay in the treated water. This is why we discussed the possibilities of using modified Chlamydomonas algae to degrade plastic remaining after the last filtration steps. As a wastewater treatment plant could be one of the places we put our algae to good use we gathered valuable information. We even got offered a tour through their laboratories and got the chance to collect some in-treatment water samples for further analysis.
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen
Microplastic and Chlamy - A story of romance
To improve the degradation of microplastic, we were looking for a way to bring Chlamy and our microplastic closer together. During our research we discovered the work of Dr. Bäumchen and his colleagues at Max Planck Institut Göttingen. The group investigated the flagella-mediated adhesion of Chlamydomonas on several surfaces. We reached out to Dr. Bäumchen to ask him about the adhesion properties of the flagella of Chlamy regarding PET surfaces. As the group had not performed any experiments at that point, Dr. Bäumchen was so kind to offer Darius to investigate the interaction with PET himself. During a two-week visit at the Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Darius measured the adhesion forces of the
Chlamydomonas strain SAG 11-32b on PET. He discovered that the strain showed forces up to 5 nN which is comparable to measurements done by the group. The adhesion could be deactivated by incubation under red light. With this photo-switch-ability we hope to trigger the adhesion in our favour.
Chlamydomonas on PET, Atomic Force Microscopy