Difference between revisions of "Team:Aachen/Description"

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<h2> Project Description </h2>
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=Introduction=
  
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<p>Tell us about your project, describe what moves you and why this is something important for your team.</p>
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Products from the bioeconomy play an important role in a sustainable future, but are dependent on cheap and available biomass as a carbon source. The availbality of sustainable biomass though, is limited by the arable area of our planet. Even by deforestation and setting up new agricultural area, we cannot provide enough arable land for both biomass for the bioindustry and food crops to solve the problem of world hunger. So if we hardly manage to feed the population, how can we guarantee the supply of biomass for other biotechnological products?
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<h5>What should this page contain?</h5>
 
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<li> A clear and concise description of your project.</li>
 
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<li>A detailed explanation of why your team chose to work on this particular project.</li>
 
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<li>References and sources to document your research.</li>
 
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<li>Use illustrations and other visual resources to explain your project.</li>
 
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Another important aspect to consider is that most of our everyday products are mainly based on fossil resources. The main source for sustainable products today, are plants. However, they are really inefficent in fixing CO2 and need a lot of time, water and space.
  
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<h4>Advice on writing your Project Description</h4>
 
  
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The best option would be to use CO2 from the air to form products. Recent technological advancements made it possible to convert CO2 into methanol with an incredible efficieny. This is where our project comes in. To take a step forward in solving this complex problem, we developed our ''E. coli'' that converts methanol to glycogen.  
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We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be consist, accurate and unambiguous in your achievements.  
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Glycogen is a sugar polymer that is safe to handle and can be easily converted into glucose. Therefore it can then be used as a carbon source for almost all existing bioprocessess since those rely on sugar. Our project has the potential to make the bioindustry independent from plants and instead use CO2 from the air. Thereby not only methanol is opened up as a new carbon source but also the CO2 level in the atmosphere is reduced. We connect the bioeconomy with advanced technologies of CO2 fixation.
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We decided to use the newly developed, ATP-neutral Methanol Condensation Cycle to enable E.coli to take up methanol. Glycogen accumulation was achieved by knocking out the degradation enzymes and overexpressing the synthesis genes. Therefore we developed a functioanl ''glgCAB'' glycogen synthesis operon, which successfully produces glycogen and is our first functional prototype.
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Our product adresses the problem in a multifunctional way because not only can the potential of methanol be exploited but also the bioeconomy can get independent of plants and there will be no competition of resources for industry and for bioindustry.
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Other potential solutions...
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Judges like to read your wiki and know exactly what you have achieved. This is how you should think about these sections; from the point of view of the judge evaluating you at the end of the year.
 
Judges like to read your wiki and know exactly what you have achieved. This is how you should think about these sections; from the point of view of the judge evaluating you at the end of the year.

Revision as of 09:29, 18 September 2015

Introduction

Products from the bioeconomy play an important role in a sustainable future, but are dependent on cheap and available biomass as a carbon source. The availbality of sustainable biomass though, is limited by the arable area of our planet. Even by deforestation and setting up new agricultural area, we cannot provide enough arable land for both biomass for the bioindustry and food crops to solve the problem of world hunger. So if we hardly manage to feed the population, how can we guarantee the supply of biomass for other biotechnological products?


Another important aspect to consider is that most of our everyday products are mainly based on fossil resources. The main source for sustainable products today, are plants. However, they are really inefficent in fixing CO2 and need a lot of time, water and space.


The best option would be to use CO2 from the air to form products. Recent technological advancements made it possible to convert CO2 into methanol with an incredible efficieny. This is where our project comes in. To take a step forward in solving this complex problem, we developed our E. coli that converts methanol to glycogen.


Glycogen is a sugar polymer that is safe to handle and can be easily converted into glucose. Therefore it can then be used as a carbon source for almost all existing bioprocessess since those rely on sugar. Our project has the potential to make the bioindustry independent from plants and instead use CO2 from the air. Thereby not only methanol is opened up as a new carbon source but also the CO2 level in the atmosphere is reduced. We connect the bioeconomy with advanced technologies of CO2 fixation.


We decided to use the newly developed, ATP-neutral Methanol Condensation Cycle to enable E.coli to take up methanol. Glycogen accumulation was achieved by knocking out the degradation enzymes and overexpressing the synthesis genes. Therefore we developed a functioanl glgCAB glycogen synthesis operon, which successfully produces glycogen and is our first functional prototype.


Our product adresses the problem in a multifunctional way because not only can the potential of methanol be exploited but also the bioeconomy can get independent of plants and there will be no competition of resources for industry and for bioindustry. Other potential solutions...




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Contact
CC-BY-SA iGEM Aachen 2015

Judges like to read your wiki and know exactly what you have achieved. This is how you should think about these sections; from the point of view of the judge evaluating you at the end of the year.



References

iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you though about your project and what works inspired you.


Inspiration

See how other teams have described and presented their projects:

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