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Recycling of gold from electronic waste using recombinant delftibactin

Undoubtedly, gold is one of the most precious materials on earth. Besides its common use in art and jewelry, gold is also an essential component of our modern computers and cell-phones. Due to the fast turn-over of today’s high-tech equipment, millions of tons of electronic waste accumulate each year containing tons of this valuable metal. The main approach nowadays to recycle gold from electronic waste is by electrolysis. Unfortunately, this is a highly inefficient and expensive procedure, preventing most of the gold from being recovered. This year a paper was published in Nature Chemical Biology by Johnsston et al. which described a small peptide produced by Delftia acidovorans which has the astonishing property to precipitate gold from solution- delftibactin. The aim of the gold recycling project was to use this non-ribosomal peptide to precipitate gold from electronic waste. This would provide a more natural way of recovery. Furthermore another goal is the introduction of the pathway for delftibactin production and additionally needed enzymes, which means about 70 kb of DNA in total, into E. coli. We want to show that these large constructs can be potentially inserted and expressed by E. coli with the promising perspective that delftibactin could readily be used as an efficient way of gold recycling from electronic waste.

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Human Practice:

The aim of science and synthetic biology in particular is to improve lives by solving problems. We as researchers (-to-be) are therefore working for society. Yet, we can only offer solutions, which have to be approved and applied by the public. Moreover, national and international legal frameworks limit every scientific action, which again, lie in the hand of the people. Thus, synthetic biology in general and our project in particular have implications for every individual, as we are all interdependent. Everyone, may he or she be a scientist or not, has an equally valuable opinion on synthetic biology. We as iGEM Team Heidelberg have therefore put great effort in communicating with various groups within society and to engage the broad public as well as artists and of course the next generation of scientists into our project. We hope to open minds, broaden horizons as well as minimize prejudices and concerns. Additionally, we discussed our ideas with various experts in science and society right from the start. Finally, we invited them all these great people to an open talk evening addressing the question "On the Way to a Synthetic Future?" in cooperation with the Biotechnological Students Initiative e.V. and the Helmholtz-Initiative for Synthetitic Biology.

Results:

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