Team:Groningen/Application

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Revision as of 13:58, 17 October 2009

Modular System

The metal scavenger with a vertical gas drive is a modular system which contains five modules; the transporter, an accumulation protein, a regulated promoter, a regulator and the gas vesicle cluster. The transporter imports the metal ion of choice. An accumulation protein facilitates accumulation of metal ions and prevents the cell from dying of the metal toxicity. The imported metal ion also acts as a regulator for the metal sensitive promotor which activates the expression of the gvp-cluster. Thereby the recombinant bacterium, with this system, accumulates metal and upon accumulation starts to float which is convenient in bioremediation or mining

Application

Water Cleaning

Over thirty years ago foreign aid organizations under the leadership of UNICEF and the WHO, with the financial support of the World Bank decided to battle against cholera and other bacteriological diseases in Bangladesh and other countries. In less than two decades over ten million water pumps where installed with spectacular results. An unforeseen consequence was that because the groundwater level dropped dramatically, arsenic which had been delivered by the Ganges and the Brahmaputra for over thousands of years began oxidizing. This created a poisonous solution which is hard to notice because it has a neither smell nor taste and whose effects are only noticed after decades. At this moment tens of millions of people are at the risk of arsenic poising. We hope that it will be possible to create an organism as robust and cheap as yeast, used for making bread, with the capabilities of the organism we are trying to create. People would be able to let the organisms grow in their water tank and scoop of the floating layer. When the bacteria no longer start to float the water is cleansed. It should only be cooked to kill of the remaining organisms.

Sludge Cleaning

ur first goal is to create a bacterium that is able to absorb and encapsulate metals and that floats. In this way one would be able to separate the metals and the sediment. Simply put the bacteria and the sediment in large container stir them together and let the cleaned sediment sink and scoop of the floating metal filled bacteria. Such a purification plant would look similar like the sewage disposal plants that we use today. Simply inject the bacteria in the sediment, let the bacteria that are full of metals float to the surface and collect them further downstream with the help floaters which are now used to contain oil pollution in the sea.

Mining

Ethical concerns

Furthermore it should not be an environmental hazard by itself, but on the other hand it should be able to maintain itself for a period of time in order to be able to clean the water. Using a cleaning plant would prevent the spread of genetically modified bacteria in to the environment. Another possibility is the use of a self-destruction plasmid which induces cell death after a certain time.