Team:Korea U Seoul/Project/Description

The global warming is the serious problem todays. It's the phenomenon which methane, CO2 and other green-house gases, caused from industrialization, increase the average temperature. These days, global warming causes abnormal climate; we should realize the seriousness of the situation and strive to decrease CO2. CCU (Carbon Capture and Utilization) is one of these efforts. It's the technique of collecting CO2 from power plant, steeling mill and others, converting CO2 into hydrocarbon and using it.

The Korea_U_Seoul team makes pearl-coli from this aspect. Pearl-coli is an E.coli converting CO2 into a pearl powder (nacre). The Korea_U_Seoul team aims to design Pearl-coli, an E.coli has an ability to convert atmospheric CO2 into pearl powder materials. The design is based on cell surface display of nacrein in E.coli. Nacrein is a major protein component in nacre(an organic-inorganic composite layer found in outer coating of pearls). We divided nacrein into functional regions - carbonic anhydrase(CA), calcium binding and scaffold repeats. CA domain fixes CO2 into carbonic acid changing bicarbonate ion in aqueous solution. We will examine if displayed nacrein in E.coli can make a pearl powder in a solution or fabricate a nacre-like structure while atmospheric CO2 is fixed into bicarbonate. Once a nacre material can be prepared from Pearl-coli, we will grow E.coli in a confined container to make synthetic pearl. The Pearl-coli has dual-function: mitigating the global warming by CO2 reduction and preparing valuable pearl-like raw materials.

Our Team project is making pearl by E.coli induced Nacrein gene. At first, amplify kinds of nacrein genes by DH5a. Next, transformation of these genes to BW25113, BL21(DE3). Then nacrein genes make nacrein proteins. Finally they make nacrein aragonite structures itself and they forms the pearl.

Nacrein has carbonic anhydrase domain that can make CO2 to carbonic acid, and it changes to bicarbonate ion(HCO3-) and H+. And We use Nacrein, Nacrein CA, Nacrein DR, Nacrein R gene to check what gene can make lots of pearl. (CA, DR and R indicate first carbonic anhydrase domain clone, repeat deleted-clone and only repeat clone, respectively.) We can make pearl with reducing CO2.

The Korea_U_Seoul team aims to design Pearl-coli that is E.coli able to convert atmospheric CO2 into a pearl powder material. The design is based on cell surface display of nacrein in E.coli. Nacrein is a major protein component in nacre (an organic-inorganic composite layer found in outer coating of pearls). We divided nacrein into several functional regions - carbonic anhydrase (CA), calcium binding and scaffold repeats. Carbonic anhydrase domain fixes CO2 into carbonic acid changing to bicarbonate ion in aqueous solution. We assume that the other regions except CA is related to formation of nacre layer in a pearl. The whole nacrein and those functional regions (CA, NA, R) are displayed in cell surface of E.coli. We will examine if displayed nacrein in E.coli can make a pearl powder in a solution or fabricate a nacre-like structure while atmospheric CO2 is fixed into bicarbonate. Once a nacre material can be prepared from Pearl-coli, we will grow E.coli in a confined container to make synthetic pearl. The Pearl-coli has dual-function such as (1) mitigate the global warming by CO2 reduction, (2) prepare valuable pearl-like raw materials.