Already in a very early phase of the project, we talked to Prof. Dr. Rainer Zawatzky, group leader and safety representative at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) as well as deputy chairman of the regional office of the BUND (a German NGO for preservation of the environment). Our discussion focused on three topics: The impact of synthetic biology in general and our project in particular on the environment, synthetic biology as a risk-technology and finally sustainability, since we intend to provide an energy-efficient alternative to conventional gold-recycling.

We received valuable input concerning communicating our project and software to the general public. Prof. Zawatzky pointed out that possible concerns of society regarding our project should be negligible for the planning of our project. In his long experience as researcher, he often experienced anxiety of non-scientists towards his research as well as doubts regarding the effectiveness of advances in Human Practice. He emphasized that interactions with critical people may not lead to the anticipated outcome. However, we believe that it is in fact possible to address and to banish fears by engaging society in your work and by encouraging communication between science and the society.

We visited Peptide Specialties Laboratories GmbH, a leader in customized peptide synthesis established in Heidelberg. Managing director Dr. Hans-Richard Rackwitz gave us fascinating insight in chemical peptide synthesis in his company (a German video tour is availible on youtube), which is based on the merryfield synthesis using Fmoc chemistry.

One of Peptide Specialties Laboratories GmbH's “specialties” is the incorporation of many non-proteinogenic amino acids including D-conformations, phosphorylated monomers, DTPA- and DOTA-coupled amino acids as well as e.g. chloride and amid substitutions. Equipped with a range of synthesizers, they are able to produce 5 to 100 mg of peptides with a length of up to 75 amino acids within 2 to 3 weeks. In order to guarantee substantially 100 % purity of the final product, Peptide Specialty Laboratories performs extensive HPLC purification and MALDI-TOF analysis to provide the customer with sufficient informations about the product.

Since one aim of our project is improve the efficiency of gold-recycling, we concluded that we should gain a deeper understanding of the current methods to recover gold and discuss the potential of our approach to recycle gold with experts in this field. Hence, a delegation of our team visited a professional gold-recycling company TBM Edelmetall Recycling. We engaged in an interesting discussion with TBM's manager Dr. h.c. Thomas Müller and Ulrich Kohlmetz from the Berolina GmbH, who introduced us to the state-of-the-art process of gold recovery and its limitations.

In general, Dr. Müller explained to us, recycling is a stable business. In order to estimate feasibility of our project idea, we have to consider aspects like the cost structure of our company, the individual starting material, the capacity of our plants and finally the gold price at the international stock exchange. Dr. Müller and Mr. Kohlmetz also pointed out that the feasibility of new technologies is limited by the high investment, which is necessary to realize them compared to established methods, although these might be less cost- and energy-efficient.

Following dissolving of gold-containing waste in aqua regia, the two methods currently used for gold recovery are precipitation and electrolysis. Since electrolysis is a very time-consuming process, fractionated precipitation is preferred method.

As we were also very interested in the feasibility of using in vivo NRPS expressing systems at an industrial scale for a variety of applications, we met with Dr. Raoul Haschke of the Heidelberg Technology Park UniTT Start-Up Centre. This initiative assists young researches as well as other university members in developing their start-up ideas and helps them make the transition to the free market.

Based on the example of a Delftibactin producing E. coli strain (see the Delftibactin project), which could be used for inexpensive gold recycling from electronic trash, we had a long and fruitful discussion. Dr. Haschke gave us a lot of of very helpful advice on financial aspects we should consider, which we then also used in our modelling. He also advised us to consider everything in a broader context: For example, assuming we have developed a process for recycling gold from industrial waste, we should think about what happens with the rest of the trash we cannot recycle using Delftibactin. Some of it, e.g. platinum or even the plastic would also be valuable, thus in an ideal case an industrial plant would be able to process all of these valuable resources. Finally, Dr. Haschke also explained to us which steps we should take for the creation of a start-up utilizing our ideas. We highly appreciate his input, which opened up new economical perspectives on our project!