Team:Cornell/project/background

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<a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Cornell/project/background/oil_sands">Oil Sands</a>
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<a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Cornell/project/background/fungal_toolkit">Fungal Toolkit</a>
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<a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Cornell/project/background/oil_extraction">Oil Extraction</a>
 
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<a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Cornell/project/background/health_effects">Health Effects</a>
 
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<a href="https://2012.igem.org/Team:Cornell/project/background/environmental_concerns">Environmental Concerns</a>
 
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Our current project involves fungal genetic engineering, an underexplored area of research, with specific applications in biomaterials development. Fungal biomaterials offer the potential to create a wide range of environmentally sustainable, useful products, as evidenced by Ecovative Design, a company in upstate New York that uses this technology to create packaging materials that serve as a Styrofoam substitute. Reducing or eliminating Styrofoam waste could have a huge positive impact on the environment – efforts are already being made to recycle Styrofoam, design alternatives, and reduce its use in large cities. Our interactions with Ecovative have revealed a need for genetic tools to improve the efficiency of the production process and further enhance the material properties of the product. To this end, we are working to develop a toolkit of modular genetic constructs for modifying basidiomycetes, using the medically-relevant, filamentous fungus Ganoderma lucidum as a model organism. In addition to creating a library of tools for fungal genetic modification, we are developing constructs for the production of antifungal agents targeting specific mold pathogens, as well as pigments from the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway in E. coli. This work is groundbreaking in our efforts to engineer a complex, basidiomycotic fungus and to work in direct partnership with a corporate partner.
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<h2 class="centered">Background Information</h2>
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<h3>What's Our Project All About?</h3>
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Canadian oil sands are a vast oil reserve that, given rising prices of petroleum, are an attractive alternative to traditional sources of crude oil. However, there are numerous public health and environmental concerns regarding the oil sands extraction process. One environmental concern is the contamination of Canadian watersheds by seepage from tailings ponds. To better monitor this issue, we have engineered a novel biosensing platform with the electroactive bacterial species <em>Shewanella oneidensis</em> MR-1, which has the unique capability to directly transfer electrons to solid-state electrodes. We exploit this feature by genetically manipulating <em>S. oneidensis</em> MR-1 to upregulate its metal-reduction capacity in the presence of analyte to generate direct current output in a whole-cell biosensor. Our goal is to develop a fully autonomous electrochemical biosensor that complements the current oil sands monitoring system by providing real-time data over extended periods of time. Furthermore, our device will circumvent the costs and complications of producing and maintaining photodiode circuits used for data acquisition in bioluminescent reporter systems by instead producing a direct electrical output. While our platform is adaptable to sensing a wide range of analytes, we will initially focus on arsenic-containing compounds and naphthalene,a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) – known contaminants of oil sands tailings ponds. We believe that our biosensor will be a valuable tool for remote,continuous, and long-term monitoring of pollutants in rivers and key watersheds.
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Revision as of 16:43, 24 September 2013

Cornell University Genetically Engineered Machines


Our current project involves fungal genetic engineering, an underexplored area of research, with specific applications in biomaterials development. Fungal biomaterials offer the potential to create a wide range of environmentally sustainable, useful products, as evidenced by Ecovative Design, a company in upstate New York that uses this technology to create packaging materials that serve as a Styrofoam substitute. Reducing or eliminating Styrofoam waste could have a huge positive impact on the environment – efforts are already being made to recycle Styrofoam, design alternatives, and reduce its use in large cities. Our interactions with Ecovative have revealed a need for genetic tools to improve the efficiency of the production process and further enhance the material properties of the product. To this end, we are working to develop a toolkit of modular genetic constructs for modifying basidiomycetes, using the medically-relevant, filamentous fungus Ganoderma lucidum as a model organism. In addition to creating a library of tools for fungal genetic modification, we are developing constructs for the production of antifungal agents targeting specific mold pathogens, as well as pigments from the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway in E. coli. This work is groundbreaking in our efforts to engineer a complex, basidiomycotic fungus and to work in direct partnership with a corporate partner.

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