Due to the fast turn-over of today’s high-tech equipment, millions of tons of electronic waste accumulate each year. It contains tons of gold which is very valuable to the society, not only because of its use in jewelry but also for medical applications. The main approach nowadays is to recycle gold by electrolysis which is highly inefficient and expensive, preventing most of the gold from being recovered. In our project we worked on finding a more efficient and environmentally friendly method to recover this precious metal:

• We managed to recover gold from electronic waste using delftibactin, a NRP produced by Delftia acidovorans
• We managed to clone all genes needed for delftibactin production into E. coli
• We managed to recombinantly express the NRPS responsible for delftibactin production in E. coli

Software

We have implemented a software called "NRPSDesigner", which allows the user to enter a desired peptide consisting of currently over 50 amino acids he or she can choose from our dynamical database. The software calculates a NRPS domain sequence, composed of domains from different species, which is capable of producing the desired non-ribosomal peptide. Via the integrated Software "Gibthon", a former iGEM project, a Gibson cloning strategy is designed. In order to make sure our tool can be used beyond this years iGEM competition we furthermore implemented the possibility of adding new domains to our database by entering a DNA sequence. On the basis of this DNA sequence a domain prediction is carried out, which is based on antismash2. This de facto enables everyone to design his or her non-ribosomal peptide of interest!