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Revision as of 01:00, 19 September 2015
THE PROJECT
Chitosan - have you heard of it? We guarantee you have benefitted from it. Chitosan has far ranging uses from agriculture, medicinal, biofilm production to industrial water treatment. Chitosan first came to our attention as an anti-fungal agent through our last year's project to prevent crop spoilage. Through our research we realized that the current methods of producing chitosan involve strong acids and bases and can leave the environment damaged.Lambert iGEM tackled this issue last year by dreaming up "Chitinite", an inexpensive and bio-friendly alternative to current caustic and chemically intensive methods of chitosan production. This year we are continuing our project. We have Biobricked the Chitin deacetylase gene, CDA and expressed it in E.coli. Chitosan is toxic to E.coli, but by using a PelB tag to express CDA in the periplasm, we hope to greatly reduce toxicity. This method facilitates cheap mass production of CDA. By engineering cells to be used in a bioreactor with discarded shrimp shells our "Chitinite" can help protect fragile ecosystems. Lambert iGEM hopes to protect the environment and help save the world.
Another highlight of our efforts was a Discovery Dialogue held in a partnership with the Atlanta Science Festival. We brought together on one stage, in an open forum; a legislator, ethicist, immunologist, FBI agent and scientist. It was well attended and received rave reviews from the attendees. The public was invited to ask questions and the concluding polls showed both an increase in the positive perception of synthetic biology, and knowledge of how genetic engineering is used in agriculture. Due to the success Lambert's iGEM team has been invited to partner with the Atlanta Science Festival again in the coming year.
