Team:OLS Canmore

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BREAKING DOWN HAIR AND FEATHER WASTE INTO USEFUL PRODUCTS

The Breakers aim to break down hair in wastewater treatment facilities and feather waste in the poultry industry. This is done using keratinase - a proteolytic enzyme capable of breaking the strong bonds in keratin. The name BreaKERs was created from the words “break”, “keratinase” and “keratin degradation”. The team’s motto is simple: ker-ate chop keratin waste!

Hair build-up in the wastewater treatment facilities is a concern locally in Canmore, as well as globally. These buildups can cause equipment and pump failure, clogging, and increased maintenance costs for the town. Currently, the blockages are only dealt with by manually removing the accumulated hair and shipping it away for disposal. Keratin waste also proves to be an issue in the global poultry industry as feathers are also made up of keratin. An estimated 8.5 billion pounds of feather waste are produced every year; however, methods of disposal are currently limited. Current methods for disposal of keratin waste include: incineration, which can lead to the release of many pollutants, foul odors, and harmful runoff capable of contaminating livestock and plants in the surrounding area; or burying the waste, which can lead to harmful leachate. Both these processes have detrimental environmental impacts and are inefficient.

As feathers and hair are protein-rich, there is an opportunity to turn the keratin waste into more beneficial protein products that can be of higher quality animal feed or fertilizer. Existing processes are expensive, time consuming, and often yield lower quality products. Keratinases, however, are capable of chemically degrading keratin down closer to its amino acids, resulting in a higher quality product. Thus, the goal for the project is to provide an inexpensive and efficient method to more completely degrade keratin in both hair and feathers.

Engineering E.coli K12 to express keratinase will accomplish this goal. Two different genes are used - Keratinase A (KERA) and Keratinase US (KERUS), both of which are found naturally in the Bacillus genera. The KERA and KERUS sequences have been optimized for expression in E.coli and synthesized into plasmid rings. KERA and KERUS will then be ligated into a standard biobrick backbone for submission to the iGEM parts registry. The design and construction of a prototype bioreactor is underway to help characterize the enzymes in action and develop an implementation strategy for industry application.