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Revision as of 05:02, 23 July 2015
Degradation of Natural Rubber
Team Brasil-USP
!-- Brasil-USP INTRODUCTION ============================================== -->
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!
Our main circuit
The main idea behind our project is based on the gene expression of a very simple circuit, followed by the exportation of Lcp e RoxA enzymes. Then, both interact with the polymers in the natural rubber and generate several products. One of them is ODTD, which can then be turned into high value fuel. Through experiments and modeling, we have investigated the main features of our system and optimized it for a bioreactor.
Our Parts
We've submitted two different parts and characterized the main circuit that should be used in the degradation of natural rubber. All these parts involve Lcp and RoxA production with Rhamnose promoter. All these parts involve Lcp and RoxA production and exportation with Rhamnose promoter. Especially to better understand/model our kill switch mechanism (highly based on TetR inhibition), we have characterized a simple circuit where TetR inhibits Gfp production. This gave us important information on the timing balance and promoter strength of our main circuit.
Entrepreneurship
Given the high potential for an industrial application, we have investigated possible business plans that could turn our project into a competitive startup. As a first step, we have met with warehouses where waste tires are treated and discarded to both promote our ideas and learn more on how to implement our system into their reality. Several chemical processes involved in our project are indeed complex, demanding some extra sfatety care.
And this is Brasil-USP Team, from University of São Paulo!