Team:Leiden/Entrepreneurship

iGEM Leiden Wiki : Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Supporting Entrepreneurship

Problem Statement

Our team"s goal is to develop an organism that is capable of degrading a toxic compound, which is primarily highly abundant in Martian soil. Up to one percent of the Martian soil contains perchlorate , a toxic compound that inhibits Thyroid activity in humans. Crops to be grown on Martian soil will accumulate perchlorate, rendering sustainable colonization of Mars impossible. NASA is aware of this issue. They have hosted a conference about the presence of perchlorate, and have begged scientists to find a solution for it.

In 2025, humans will land on Mars for the first time. Considering the toxicity of Mars" soil, these humans will need to be supplied externally. One option is to periodically send spacecrafts carrying food to Mars. Such a journey takes a spacecraft 150-300 days 1 and costs $500M. 2 These travelling times and costs might decrease in the future, due to scientific improvements, as well as the competition between privately-held space-travel companies. Even so, for a sustainable habitation on Mars, certain supplies would have to be produced on Mars. Water can be recycled, but food cannot. As such, substances that can produce reasonable amounts of food, and are unchallenging to transport have to be used. The most logical solution is the cultivation of plants. A seed is easy to carry in a spacecraft, and the soil it can grow in is already on Mars. Scientist from Wageningen University have already demonstrated that Martian soil contains enough nutrients for plants to grow. They used Martian soil simulant -that does not contain perchlorate- for their experiments. The conclusion is that Mars-grown vegetables are edible, if one removes the perchlorate they contain. This gives us our target product: a (biological) device that is able to break down not just filter- perchlorate on Mars.

Product Design

Through arduous study of biochemistry, we have managed to develop our final, preliminary designs for our product. On our page "Bioreactor", we give a very thorough description of the exact working and composition of the bioreactor. For now, it is important to note, that we enhance the performance of our bacteria, by placing them in a bioreactor.

Figure 1: The designs for our bioreactor.

The total system is displayed in figure 1.

We are discussing the possibility of making a prototype bioreactor together with our university, as well as an industrial prototyping facility called "BPF". As soon as this works on a small scale, we can research our potential for making an industrial variant.

Mars Case

Whilst perchlorate"s presence on earth is a problem, it is a barrier to our existence on Mars. Perchlorate accumulates easily in plants. In research mentioned before, 79 % of all perchlorate in solution ended up in plants tissue. This makes any plant grown on Mars inedible. This is the case, supposing that plants are even able to grow in such high perchlorate concentrations. Out of all Martian soil, 0.5-1% is perchlorate. This is in mass percentages, meaning that 1 kg of Martian soil contains up to 10 g perchlorate. When dissolved in water, the perchlorate dissolves. Perchlorate salts generally have high solubility. The perchlorate with the smallest solubility is potassium perchlorate (KClO4-). At the most, one can dissolve 15 g of potassium perchlorate per liter of water. One can, however, dissolve up to 2kg of sodium perchlorate per liter. So, consider moist Martian soil. The water in the soil now has a concentration of perchlorate ranging from 0.11-16.1 mol/L. Honghzi He et al. have tested plant growth at various perchlorate concentrations. 3 The highest concentration was 500 mg/L, this is a factor 30 lower than the lowest concentration found on Mars. At these concentrations, plant growth is already significantly decreased. The plant, C. indica only grew up to 68% of its natural height at 500 mg/L. This means that farming for food in Mars is not viable, unless the perchlorate is reduced.

The question is, what kind of vegetables should one grow for survival on Mars? Researchers from Wageningen University have found that the following plants grow best on Mars: tomatoes, Mustard, stonecrop, cress and wheat. Unfortunately, these are not the most efficient plants.

Rice, for example, is a very nutritious crop, but it requires a lot of water. In addition, one can only harvest it yearly. These two conditions make it unsuitable for Mars.

Another promising crop is the tepary bean. This bean requires very little water. It has 4 calories per gram. Additionally, it can be harvested every 60 days. Unfortunately, this crop only yields 0.0645 kg/m2.

The potato has a yield of 1.74 kg/m2. It does not require much more water than the tepary bean. Considering a requirement of 2000 calories per day, one would need the following things to be able to live off of potatoes:

1.       104 m2 of farmable land. A yield of 1.74 kg/m2 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Yield ) every 60 days corresponds to this area. This would provide 2000 calories on a daily basis.

2.       10.6 Liters of water. ( https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste ). To produce one kilogram of potatoes, one needs 287 liters of water in total.

3.       A PH of 5.5-6

4.       19.9 tonnes of martian soil. Potatoes require a soil depth of 0.1 meter. This, combined with the area needed, gives us the required amount of soil.

 

1.99 tonnes of Martian soil contains 199 kilograms of perchlorate. This is a lot of perchlorate to reduce. Luckily, the process can be done iteratively. Namely:

1.       The astronaut puts an amount of sand in the bioreactor, which contains the maximum amount of perchlorate the bioreactor can process in one batch.

2.       One waits until the rate at which perchlorate is broken down saturates.

3.       Add another batch of sand, start at 1.

The sand can be used immediately, because the perchlorate is taken into the bioreactor. This way, one can already arrange the purified sand, whilst the perchlorate is being broken down. We place a water-proof canvas on the area we intend to use for farming. All the purified sand is place here. This way, we can easily isolate the pure sand from the perchlorate-contaminated sand. If we water this purified soil, it cannot drain down into the soil, due to the canvas.

This comprises the system that we found ideal for making Mars habitable.

Our technique has a huge advantage when compared to using filters or reverse osmosis; the perchlorate is broken down. The perchlorate is not moved anywhere, it is reduced into oxygen and chloride. The oxygen is then pumped away, the chloride is precipitated.

In addition, it is advantageous over chemical reduction as well. Chemical reduction start a highly exothermal reaction, which can easily turn explosive. In the past, numerous incidents have occurred to to the exothermal nature of such oxygen generators. ValuJet 592 crashed 4 , killing all 110 passengers inside, due to the explosion of a number of oxygen generators. Another airplane (ATA DC-10 Flight 131) was destroyed whilst being parked, due to a malfunctioning oxygen generator 5 . Additionally, two passengers on a submarine [6] have died due to an oxygen generator. Furthermore, the MIR space station was lit on fire by such a reaction [7] .

By using bacteria to break down perchlorate, we can achieve the same performance of perchlorate reduction, whilst retaining major advantages compared to the techniques discussed above. To summarise:

1.      We send an Eppendorf tube containing our bacterium, together with components for a small bioreactor to Mars. This means that it takes significantly less weight than an ion exchange system. Sending heavy items on a spacecraft is a challenge in itself. With our technique, we can easily get the components on Mars.

2.      Due to the fact that the bacterium utilises the energy released by breaking down perchlorate, an explosion is impossible. In aerospace engineering, any risk should be avoided. Conversations with Airbus Defence and Space, as well as the European Space Agency and Interstellar Space in Leiden have informed us about the demands of spacecrafts. In coordination with their requirements, we have designed a system that is able to meet the high standard of safety and reliability required in space.

3.      We can deliver continuous operation. Currently, any perchlorate reduction system uses batch processes. In our system, the astronaut can immediately use the purified Martian soil.

The reasons above illustrate why our project has a significant potential for entrepreneurship. We have no competition on Mars, because we are at the bleeding edge of science. We are the first group in the world to develop a biological system for breaking down perchlorate on Mars. Due to the microgravity experiments we ran, we are also able to guarantee that our bacteria behave in the same fashion as on Earth.

 

Business on Earth

Before we are able to send our bacterium to Mars, we need to make a proof of principle on Earth. If we can demonstrate that we are able to solve perchlorate-related issues on Earth, space agencies will be convinced about our potential on Mars. In The Netherlands, there is a lot of interest for the application of space technology on Earth. This process is called "downstream technology". An example is using spectrometers found in satellites to detect whether vegetables are ripe. During a meeting with the ESA Business Incubator, they were in ecstasy about the potential our system has for downstream technology. They have invited us to continue our project -in the shape of a company- in their business incubation track. The Leiden Bio Science Park has also invited us to participate in such a track. As of now, we are considering what would the best choice. The Science Park has a lot more support for life science companies, while the ESA knows a lot more about aerospace engineering. Besides these partners, a local venture capital firm called "Innovation Quarter" wants us to pitch for investors to qualify for investments. These are not even the most exciting negotiations we"ve had. On September 29th, we"ve pitched our business case for a large group of Russian, Japanese, American and Chinese investors. That week, there was a forum for large-scale investments in The Netherlands. For more information, see the official letter for the Russian trade mission: https://www.arccom.org/second-annual-conference/agenda/ . The host of the forum contacted us to pitch for the investors. This group of investors was especially interested in biotechnology, and they were delighted to hear about our project. The host of the forum and our team are looking at a follow-up to see what the investors want to do.

We were able to attract this much attention for our project, because we"ve identified clear niches in which our product would be able to easily outperform existing technologies. We would love to give clear examples about these niches, but that is not yet possible. Due to negotiations with ESA and an associate from McKinsey, we are not able to disclose this information at this point. By the time that we have made all arrangements, we will update the status of our business case.


References

  1. http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-mars/
  2. http://www.ibtimes.com/nasas-mission-mars-despite-cost-overruns-space-launch-system-clears-another-hurdle-2345394
  3. "Effects of perchlorate on growth of four wetland plants and its accumulation in plant tissues", Hongzhi et al.
  4. "The lessons of ValuJet 592", the Atlantic.
  5. "Hull loss description ", Aviation Safety Network
  6. "Coroner blasts Navy over 'failures' that led to deaths of two submariners killed by exploding oxygen tank", mailonline
  7. "International Life Support", Ask magazine