Team:Mingdao/Design
After finding, analyzing and testing with our novel fire retardant bio-material of phosphorylated SR protein, we would like to challenge the effectiveness of our fire retardant bio-coatings on real products. Fire retardant clothes and fire retardant paint attract increasingly interest in the market and industry. We applied our prototypes of fire retardant bacteria which produce phosphorylated SR proteins to mixing cotton and painting on a model house.
Fire retardant bacteria were made as described in the procedure of protein induction and analysis as well as flame test.
↓ Recover bacteria carrying genes of SR and SRPK1 proteins from -80°C stock
↓ Culture at 37°C O/N
↓ Dilute 100X with fresh media and incubate for 2 hr till OD between 0.6~1.0
↓ Add 1mM IPTG to induce protein expression for 4 hr
↓ Soak cotton in the culture media containing bacteria
Or ↓ Centrifuge the bacteria and paint on the house
↓ Dry the bacteria completely in the oven at 100°C over 30 min
↓ Subjected to flame test with gas fire gun as indicated condition
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Samples: cotton (5X5 cm2)
Condition: Ignition till burning up (cotton control) or continues to the end (bio-coating).
Cotton uncoated as control
Cotton bio-coated with fire retardant bacteria
The result showed an exciting achievement on our fire retardant bacteria, in which fire retardant coating can protect the cotton from flame for up to 1 min. The carbon formation occurs in the charring process further proves our idea that fuels burned with phosphorus-containing material will release water and form carbon layer.
Charring reaction: (HPO3)n + Cx(H2O)y → [C]x+ (HPO3)n × yH2O
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As you know, when fire starts to burn on your house, it will soon become a horrible disaster. A special paint material, called fireproof paint, can slow down the spread of fire, or even stop it! We’re interested to know how our genetically modified bacteria could stop fire as fireproof paint. We painted the bacteria on the walls of wooden house, and see if it can really resist the fire.
Design
We applied laser cutter to build our house model in Mindgao’s Fablab. We designed the model in the size of 80x60x85 mm3 and made up of chipboards. The pieces of cut boards were assembled to form the wooden house.
Flame test
Samples: wooden house (80x60x85 mm3 )
Condition: Ignition with gas fire gun for 45 seconds
House uncoated as control
House bio-coated with fire retardant bacteria
Once again, the amazing result indicated that the house coated with our modified bacteria can resist fire for up to 45 seconds in our flame test. It clearly showed that the charring was formed on the coatings on the burning house. The data obviously demonstrated that we discovered and created a novel fire retardant bio-material. Phosphorylated and high contents of nitrogen in a protein could be recognized as fire retardant bio-materials. Our hypothesis had been successfully confirmed.
