Team:Lambert GA
THE PROJECT
Chitosan, you might never have heard of it, but we guarantee you've 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 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 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 by further characterizing our CDA by biobricking and expressing it in E.coli. Chitosan is toxic to e.coli, but by using a PelB tag to express CDA in the periplasm, we greatly reduce toxicity. This method facilitates cheap mass production of CDA. By making an eco-friendly fungicide accessible and cheap, 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. The public was invited to ask questions and the concluding polls showed both an increase in the positive perception of synthetic biology, but also a request to hold another session this coming year.
