Team:Brasil-USP

iGEM Brasil-USP

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Degradation of

Natural Rubber

Team Brasil-USP

Brasil-USP team's 2015 project is to develop an
innovative and sustainable solution for a significant environmental problem:
accumulation of waste tires.

Current recycling techniques demand high energy consumption, and are completely overwhelmed by the annual amount of rubber waste. In addition, natural rubber degradation may take up to 1000 years.

We aim to accelerate this process by genetically engineering microorganisms to express and secrete two crucial enzymes for the degradation of natural rubber: RoxA (Rubber oxygenase) and Lcp (Latex clearing protein).

Tires and several other products, however, are composed by vulcanized rubber, which ensures its durability and increase its elasticity and strength. In this regard, for vulcanized rubber degradation, the project may include a pre-treatment, which uses Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, bacteria that naturally devulcanizes rubber. Both of these processes will be scaled up in bioreactors.

Both of these processes will be scaled up in bioreactors!

We are working on it...

These are our sponsors

We are students and post docs from
University of São Paulo, Brazil

Learn more about our team!