Team:Calgary/Project

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The overarching goal for the synthesis component of the project was to produce poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) by utilizing the nutrients present in human waste. To accomplish efficiently convert organic feedstocks into PHB, we genetically engineered bacteria to produce PHB by manipulating two metabolic systems within E. coli as follows...

After E. coli BL21(DE3) engineered by the Synthesis team produces poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), it is stored as intracellular granules that range in size from 60-80 nm. This creates a challenging problem: efficient extraction of the desired PHB from inside the cell. During the early stages of our project, we explored many possible PHB extraction methods. Before deciding on using a PHB-secretion system, we evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of each system in terms of our space application...

Our proposed process is shown in Figure 1. In the first step of the process, astronaut’s feces are collected into a storage tank using a vacuum toilet. Feces are then transferred into another tank and left to ferment for three days with natural gut flora to increase the concentration of volatile fatty acids ( VFAs) that are later consumed by engineered...