Team:TU-Munich/Project/Phytoremediation

What it´s all about

As industrialization reached ever more parts of the globe throughout the last decades the standard of living increased drastically around the world. However nothing comes without a price and the toll not only we but our children and grandchildren have to pay for our luxury is a polluted environment which will someday cloud all the great modern comforts of our time.
Today a great variety of science and technology is eager to protect the environment from further harm and reverse the damage already done. Of these technologies bioremediation, and phytoremediation in particular, seems to be the most promising one as it tries to help nature help itself. Bioremediation was defined as "the process of judiciously exploiting biological processes to minimize an unwanted environmental impact; usually it is the removal of a contaminant form the biosphere." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/0471238961.0209151816180914.a01/abstract Prince, 2000 Phytoremediation is the concept of removing these pollutans either directly by plants themselves or by specialized bacteria living in a symbiosis with plants. There is a multitude of different pollutants that are primary targets for remediation such as Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), insecticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), heavy metals such as cadmius or mercury or phrmaceutical products such as diclofenac or ethynyl estradiol .

Phytoremediation vs. Bioremediation

So why did we choose Phytoremediation over the approach of classical Bioremediation using bacteria like so many iGEM-teams do?
For this there are several reasons. For one we thought that the overall applicability of plants is much higher than of bacteria. Provided a sufficient saftey mechanism transgenic plants can be deployed almost everywhere. All they need is light and they will sustain themselves. Bacteria on the other hand are much harder to contain and are generally more expensive than plant systems.

Previous Work (some examples)

• MIT 2007 https://2007.igem.org/MIT

--> Filtering Mercury in E.coli

• Bilkent UNAM Turkey (https://2011.igem.org/Team:Bilkent_UNAM_Turkey/Project_Description)

--> Degrading TNT in Algae

• Bielefeld 2012 (Laccase)

--> Degrading Hormones in different organisms -> Cooperation with LMU

• Collaboration with Paris-Saclay and Dundee

Choice of Chassis:

• water should be natural environment
• autotrophic
• easy handling

1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/0471238961.0209151816180914.a01/abstract Prince, 2000 Prince, R. C. (2000). Bioremediation. Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.