Difference between revisions of "Team:British Columbia"

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<h2 style="text-align: left">Project Description</h2>
 
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<p>Petroleum-derived chemicals are used as building blocks to create a variety of products we take for granted in our day to day lives. And while these molecules have proven to be critical for modern society, their overuse has had significant negative
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<p>Pulp and paper mills around British Columbia’s northern heartland were once at the forefront of the small town economy. Their main function was the production of paper and thick fiber board from organic compounds such as vegetable or wood fibers (raw biomass). However, in recent years the pulp and paper industry has struggled due to the global shift from newsprint to digital applications on a variety of electronic hardwares. In North America, demand for pulp and paper products is down at least 75 percent from its peak era in the 1990’s. The Pulp and Paper Products Council tracks paper product usage closely and has reported that demand has fallen close to ten percent each year and the decrease continues to accelerate. As such, a large portion of the paper mills in BC have closed down or significantly reduced their workforce impacting the local economic output and forcing people from their homes in search of other forms of employment. The 2016 UBC iGEM team saw a need to repurpose paper mill industry in BC to bring back work to the communities impacted by the shift in paper product utilization. With BC already having significant infrastructure for biomass processing in the form of empty mills, we aimed to develop a process that utilizes raw plant material for our starting material.
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      environmental and societal impacts. Microbial biocatalysts play a prominent role in the future of renewable biomass degradation into bio-equivalent chemicals that can be used directly in established industrial processes. However, there is high cost to process raw biomass into a usable form which has remained a major obstacle in successfully implementing these techniques in industry.</p>
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     <p>During our brainstorming process we came up with the initial idea of using an engineered microbial community to effectively transform biomass into useful products. We were inspired by new research at our university on the expression of functional
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     <p>Petroleum-derived chemicals are used as building blocks to create a variety of products we take for granted in our day to day lives. And while these molecules have proven to be critical for modern society, their overuse has had significant negative environmental and societal impacts. As we push forward into a more responsible future, we must pivot towards sustainable solutions able to supersede petroleum-derived products with renewable alternatives. </p>
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      enzymes onto the S-Layer of certain strains of bacteria. We aim to use these new techniques together with traditional bacterial bio-catalytic pathways to make the processing and utilization of renewable biomass feedstocks cheaper and more efficient.
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     <p>To accomplish this task, we are designing a two-part microbial community. One half will be responsible for transforming biomass feeds stalks such as lignin and cellulose into useful growth substrates. While the other half will focus on using these
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     <p>One successfully implemented solution has been to use microbial biocatalysts to transform renewable biomass, from agricultural and forestry wastes, into bio-equivalent chemicals able to be directly used in established industrial processes. Companies such as BioAmber and Genomatica have championed this approach, creating important molecular building blocks such as succinic acid and 1,4-butanediol. While these early successes have highlighted the potential of these systems, renewable biomass as a whole remains underutilized. However,  major roadblock to implementing successful industrial-scale bioprocesses is the high cost of processing raw biomass into a usable form. Comprising greater than 50 percent of total production costs, as estimated by the National Renewable Energy Lab, <b>biomass processing creates a significant barrier that prevents all but the most mature technologies from utilizing renewable feedstocks</b>. </p>
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      growth substrates for the production of useful products. </p>
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     <p>To create our biomass transforming bacterium, we will use the robust surface expression system in the bacterium <i>Caulobacter crescentus</i> to display biomass transforming enzymes, mimicking the cellulosomes and laccases found in natural biomass
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     <p>This year, our team aimed to bring the processing of biomass back to BC mills by making the utilization of renewable biomass feedstocks cheaper and more efficient. Taking lessons from nature, we pursued a biomimicry approach, aiming to build a microbial community able to effectively transform biomass into useful products. To accomplish this task, we split our microbial community into two halves. One half responsible for transforming the biomass into usable growth substrates. While the other half focuses on using these growth substrates for the production of useful products. Our community has the potential to provide an unique method for surface display of functional enzymes, while also being a proof of concept for the direct conversion of raw biomass into usable products.  
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      degrading bacteria. To create our production bacterium, we will engineer <i>Escherichia coli</i>, to produce violacein. Violacein is a high-value natural product with interesting pharmacological properties. It also has the benefit of being easily
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      detected and quantified, allowing for the validation of our approach. When combined, these bacterial strains will be able to work together to degrade and valorize biomass. </p>
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    <p>So far our team has been working to characterize a bio-bricked β-carotene construct in <i>E. coli</i> in order to do an initial proof of concept, we have also been working on the violacein construct. Simultaneously we have been cloning several laccases
 
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      and celluloses into the s-layer protein of <i>C. crescentus</i>. We hope to get functional expression of our enzymes onto the s-layer and characterize the enzymatic activity to build and active model for our system which we can test by growing the
 
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      two bacteria together in minimal media with restricted carbon sources. </p>
 
 
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Revision as of 01:03, 8 October 2016

Home

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UBC
iGEM
2016

Project Description

Pulp and paper mills around British Columbia’s northern heartland were once at the forefront of the small town economy. Their main function was the production of paper and thick fiber board from organic compounds such as vegetable or wood fibers (raw biomass). However, in recent years the pulp and paper industry has struggled due to the global shift from newsprint to digital applications on a variety of electronic hardwares. In North America, demand for pulp and paper products is down at least 75 percent from its peak era in the 1990’s. The Pulp and Paper Products Council tracks paper product usage closely and has reported that demand has fallen close to ten percent each year and the decrease continues to accelerate. As such, a large portion of the paper mills in BC have closed down or significantly reduced their workforce impacting the local economic output and forcing people from their homes in search of other forms of employment. The 2016 UBC iGEM team saw a need to repurpose paper mill industry in BC to bring back work to the communities impacted by the shift in paper product utilization. With BC already having significant infrastructure for biomass processing in the form of empty mills, we aimed to develop a process that utilizes raw plant material for our starting material.

Petroleum-derived chemicals are used as building blocks to create a variety of products we take for granted in our day to day lives. And while these molecules have proven to be critical for modern society, their overuse has had significant negative environmental and societal impacts. As we push forward into a more responsible future, we must pivot towards sustainable solutions able to supersede petroleum-derived products with renewable alternatives.

One successfully implemented solution has been to use microbial biocatalysts to transform renewable biomass, from agricultural and forestry wastes, into bio-equivalent chemicals able to be directly used in established industrial processes. Companies such as BioAmber and Genomatica have championed this approach, creating important molecular building blocks such as succinic acid and 1,4-butanediol. While these early successes have highlighted the potential of these systems, renewable biomass as a whole remains underutilized. However, major roadblock to implementing successful industrial-scale bioprocesses is the high cost of processing raw biomass into a usable form. Comprising greater than 50 percent of total production costs, as estimated by the National Renewable Energy Lab, biomass processing creates a significant barrier that prevents all but the most mature technologies from utilizing renewable feedstocks.

This year, our team aimed to bring the processing of biomass back to BC mills by making the utilization of renewable biomass feedstocks cheaper and more efficient. Taking lessons from nature, we pursued a biomimicry approach, aiming to build a microbial community able to effectively transform biomass into useful products. To accomplish this task, we split our microbial community into two halves. One half responsible for transforming the biomass into usable growth substrates. While the other half focuses on using these growth substrates for the production of useful products. Our community has the potential to provide an unique method for surface display of functional enzymes, while also being a proof of concept for the direct conversion of raw biomass into usable products.