Synthetic Biology: A new frontier in solving the world’s challenges
At the time of writing, a crisis is unfolding in the waters that surround Mauritius. A ship filled with petrochemicals (chemicals derived from petroleum or natural gas) has run aground and is leaking petrochemicals into the ocean, devastating sea life and causing catastrophic harm to nearby reefs.
Now, imagine a world where a rapid response team arrive and release microorganisms into polluted environments, degrading the harmful chemicals and remediating the ecosystem before significant damage can occur. That’s the world we want to live in!
Under supervision of Prof. Brett Neilan and Dr. Karl Hassan, both from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at the University of Newcastle, we will take a step towards this reality.
The DeNovocastrians tackling the big challenges…
G’Day! We are the DeNovocastrians, the inaugural iGEM team from University of Newcastle.
iGEM (international Genetically Engineered Machine) is an interdisciplinary competition that gives students the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology, by tackling everyday challenges while engaging with the community and industry. Synthetic biology is the designing, engineering, testing and validating of a biological system made from interchangeable biological parts and standard molecular biology techniques.
The DeNovocastrians have two goals for iGEM:
1) Engineer microorganisms to break down toxic pollutants in the environment.
2) Construct a sensor, utilised by companies and researchers alike, using microorganisms that will detect petrochemicals in the environment.
Would you like to know how we can use synthetic biology to achieve these vital environmental remediation goals?
Keep reading and follow our journey on Facebook (DeNovocastrians2020) and Twitter (DNovocastrians)!
Petrochemical pollution affects a range of marine and terrestrial environments in the world today. For example, the petrochemical benzene is listed as a Group 1 carcinogen (known to cause cancer) by The International Agency for research on Cancer. Benzene also has broad impacts on natural environments and is harmful to all kinds of creatures.
Our project will use the power of microorganisms to clean-up and monitor ecosystems that have been polluted with petrochemicals. Certain bacteria can break down toxic petrochemicals into simpler molecules, molecules which are later used to create energy for themselves.
We will identify the DNA instructions that grant these certain bacteria the ability to use toxic pollutants for energy, then use synthetic biology to copy these DNA instructions into commonly found microorganisms. Similar to the copy-and-paste function on your computer! These modified common bacteria will now become perfectly suited to grow in contaminated environments, be they marine or terrestrial.
Initially, we have found the genes that are responsible for degrading the petrochemical benzene (and other petrochemicals) in Rhodococcus and Acinetobacter bacteria. Their genes will be cut out, copied and inserted into terrestrial and marine bacteria species. These species can then be used in pollution remediation efforts in their respective environments.
In the future, other genes could also be inserted into these microbes that would allow more complex pollutants to be broken down, pollutants that are notoriously difficult to remove from the environment.
…and preparing for future challenges
Newcastle is an industrial city, so exposure to even low levels of petrochemicals over a long time can have major consequences on both humans and the environment.
Our secondary goal is to build a biosensor (signalling system using microorganisms) that detects these low levels of petrochemicals. Genes that tell bacteria to degrade petrochemicals are switched on when the bacteria are in the presence of petrochemicals. Therefore, we will alter parts of these degrading genes by inserting a fluorescent signal inside them. In this way, we can observe and track the amount of petrochemicals that the microbes degrade.
Our sensor will work like this:
1. When petrochemicals are present, the microbes will glow green.
2. When our engineered microbes break down the petrochemicals, the microbes will glow red.
In summary, we will have engineered bacteria to degrade harmful pollutants, and a way for the bacteria to alert us to the presence of the pollutants and how quickly they break them down.
By the end of the project, we hope to have helped the world take a small step towards a cleaner and greener planet!
