Team:WHU-China/Description
It is well-known that every coin has two sides. For many precious resources we are using now, the same theory applies. We named them Coin Chemicals (CC). On the one hand, CC act as vital materials and show a great side; on the other hand, they become dangerous evil to the environment once the improper emission or leakage happens.
For instance, typical chemicals like Hg, Cd, Pb and cyanide play a irreplaceable role in industrial community.
P, N and organic fertilizer are very useful resource in agriculture.
what’s more, U and Pu can provide human beings with clean nuclear energy.
However, once they are not in the right positon — leaked to the environment, they will cause severe disaster to our ecosystem.
This kind of leakage actually accounts for most environmental problems and put a strain on modern society. If we don’t take harsh action, these pollutions will gradually deteriorate our living environment and reshape our life. Garbage is misplaced resources, so how to minimize the adverse effect to environment and maximize the utilization of CC?
To solve this tough and urgent problem, we design a novel device. This device can specifically absorb the CC we want from the water body and reserve them in its interior space.
Even more exciting, all our device need is solar energy! In essence, the entropy increase process of the leaked element is reversed by solar energy. This environment-friendly way make us very confident about it, we hope one day our device can save the environment, thus, we call this device—Noah’s Ark！
To solve this environmental problem that caused by CC, we invent this Ark! It can float on the surface of water and use solar energy to collect CC like a “marine cage”.
So you may wonder, how can we do that? The Ark has been carefully designed : The core device is bio-conveyor. There is a track which our biofilm adhere to and it can shuttle between environment and interior periodically. The track and biofilm constitute bio-conveyor.
The outside water can pass through the turbine, allowing CC to be absorbed by the bio-conveyor. When the part of loaded conveyor is rotated into the inner of the Ark, it can release what it has absorbed earlier. That enables our Ark to collect CC continuously from the environment.
So, how does the bio-conveyor work—CC collection? The secret lies in our biological part. Actually, this biofilm is formed by both engineered bacteria and algae.
To achieve our goal, we construct this advanced multiorganism system—both bacteria and algae play a very important role in it.
1.Our bacteria:
We choose E.coli BL.21 as our chassis. Bacteria play a core role in the system since all the engineered process happens in them. We transformed two plasmids into them: one is responsible for element collection and the other is responsible for biofilm formation.
2.Algae perfectly match with bacteria:
Firstly, bacteria alone can’t survive and grow well in sewage environment, since there are many chemicals, organic agents and even antibiotics in the polluted water. However, the EPS(exopolysubstance) excreted by algae can give bacteria protect and resistance to make them work well.
Secondly, since we want to make it work in lakes or ocean, it will be better if it can work automatically. But toughly, to collect the diffused element is an anti-entropy matter, and it needs energy! In this situation, our algae can perfectly solve this problem by providing bacteria carbonhydrate through photosynthesis.
In next session—design, we will introduce how our bacteria collect specific element and stabilize the symbiotic biofilm through two pathways.