Team:Ryerson Toronto
The DyeStuff Factory
Ryerson_Toronto iGEM 2016
With the human population continuously increasing, the need for renewable and sustainable sources of energy is also increasing. A study projected that in 2050, we will need 30 trillion watts to accommodate human life on earth. In 2005, we used 13 trillion watts, 85% of which came from fossil fuels.
Let's look to the sun
The sun has been powering the growth of organisms on earth for centuries now, from plants to algae, to even humans! With such a great resource at hand, it only makes sense to avail it. Here at Ryerson, we are trying to tackle our energy consumption problem by looking to organic dyes.
There’s a vast variety of organic dyes, and they serve many purposes. Organic dyes have many real-world applications such as being used for medical probes or serving as pigments for industrial purposes. One of the greatest feature of these dyes is that they can be made by organisms on earth. The only problem? The synthesis of these dyes is very time-consuming and expensive. But the Ryerson iGEM 2016 team is out to tackle this challenge, by creating a DyeStuff factory with cyanobacteria as the home and the sun as its power.
