Team:Groningen/Interviews
Meetings with Experts
Tjerk Douma (28th June 2018)
On the 28th of June we met with Tjerk Douma, who is a Master student in Energy and Environmental Sciences. Tjerk explained to us the importance of a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and how everything is taken up in that. For us, it might be interesting to look at the difference in the LCA of StyGreen and oil based Styrene. We agreed that Tjerk would help us with the LCA, and had several more meetings after this.
Drs. Karin Ree (11th July 2018)
Drs. Karin Ree is a member of the Science Shop in Groningen. The Science Shop connects ambitious students to companies who are looking for academic research. As we are looking for the connection to the bioplastic industry, Karin was able to give us great tips on who we should contact. She helped us to find people inside and outside of the university who we could contact. Next to this she has send us a few papers on the sustainability of bioplastics.
Prof. Dr. Gert Jan Euverink (8th August 2018)
Gert Jan Euverink is the University of Groningen representative in the CaDOS project. Toilet paper in sewage material contains roughly 80% cellulose. In the CaDOS project, this cellulose material is used to drain water from the sludge, which improves the purification process. Furthermore, Euverink advises companies on the implementation of their technical ideas. His expertise has been helpful to previous iGEM teams, since he was a supervisor of the winning team of Groningen in 2012!
Prof. Dr. Katja Loos (5th July 2018)
Biodegradable plastics, like PLA, are technically biodegradable but only under controlled conditions. In nature they still take a long time to degrade on their own, only a bit faster than for example polystyrene. However, PLA being “biodegradable” sends a message that it’s okay to throw it away anywhere because it’s “biodegradable”, only adding to the problem. Just recently the EU has moved to ban single use plastics. Therefore what we should do is look into non-single use plastics. While polystyrene also has non-single use applications, the stigma of it being used as disposable packaging material is not easily erased. Some polymers that are nearly always single use include:
- Nylons
- Polyurethanes
- Polyamides
- PET
- Polymethylmethacrylate (plexiglass)
Prof. Dr. Francesco Picchioni (3rd Oktober 2018)
We went to Francesco Picchioni to ask about his opinion on styrene and our project. Did he see benefit in it, or would he think this was unfeasible? He explained to us that styrene is a very good material for various reasons. The first is that it is transparent, which is why you can color it easily with other chemicals. Also styrene has a aromatic ring and has pi-pi stackings of these rings. This makes that the plastics with styrene have a high TG (Glass Transition Temperature). These connections are way stronger than in PET and PLA, because these have esther connections. No other plastics have these characteristics, and therefore styrene is irreplaceable. Right now, styrene is not recycled very much, as the price is more expensive than making new styrene. However, because styrene is a thermoplastic, it is easily recycled when the market pull would be stronger. Dr. Picchioni was very suprised that styrene was able to be made in a biological way. If this could be created with a high yield, this would be a major discovery and he would be very interested.
"If you can make me a few kilo's, you can come back to me!"
Prof. Dr. A. J. M. Driessen
To gain more insight in optimizing a yeast strain we met with prof. dr. A.J.M. Driessen, head of the molecular microbiology department at the University of Groningen. We discussed how we could best implement and optimize our idea. Prof. dr. Driessen gave us very helpful directions. With the help of his feedback we went from the idea of two separate coexisting yeast strains (one producing glucose from cellulose, and one producing styrene from that glucose), to one yeast strain doing both processes. Also, we discussed multiple knock-outs we could implement to gain higher yields. Finally, prof. dr. Driessen proposed the usage of CRISPR-Cas9 technique to us, to genomically integrate the genes we wanted to introduce, instead of using plasmids. Prof. dr. Driessen brought us in contact important people as well as providing us with additional laboratory space.
