Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Bettencourt/Project/Indigo"

Making patterns on denim

Highlights

Goals

Methods

Results

BioBrick

Abstract

The main focus of our project this year was enzyme design and discovery. We chose to engineer enzymes because they are a practical technology for removing stains, already known to be safe and economic. However, in our search for microbes that produce stain-removing enzymes we discovered something else: microbes are beautiful. When nutrients are added to fabric samples, bacterial and fungal colonies bloom in every size, shape and color. These microbes grow in beautiful patterns, remove pigments from fabric and leave other pigments behind. When the microbes were gone, the color and texture of the fabric was changed in ways that looked cool to us. What we describe below is not necessarily practical and only somewhat scientific. We are playing around with microbes on ordinary denim blue jeans and trying to create beauty.

In this subproject Mission Indigo, we wanted to export our idea of degrading stains with biology and our methods in a more artistic and fashionable approach: degrading indigo on jeans to make patterns (just like jeans tye and dye!). We worked just as the team did with anthocyanin to find ways to degrade indigo: investigate already know enzymes that degrade our pigment and find microorganisms that naturally degrade it. We basically reproduce the work of enzyme and microbe’s team in a smaller scale: through literature we identified one interesting enzyme that we tested, and we collected different microbes with potential capacity of degradation of indigo.

Motivation and Background

Blue Jeans: Structure and Function

Jeans are trousers made with denim, a cotton textile. Blue jeans are dyed with indigo, a plant-derived pigment that is now mostly produced synthetically. In a classic blue denim weave, the warp thread is dyed with indigo while the weft threat is left white. The reasulting fabric is blue on one surface, white on the other, with a grainy texture where the fibers cross. The blue threads are stained only on the outside and stay white at the core. As a result, the fabric lightens with wear, producing a characteristic fading pattern (Figure 1).

Results

We cultured microorganisms on denim covered with minimal M9, isolated the strains and identified them. Then, we tested their capacity at indigo’s degradation. At the end we have three microorganisms that degrade indigo: 2 Streptomyces and Pantoea.

Methods

Attribution

This project was done mostly by Mislav and Elisa. We would like to thank XX for their collaboration.

References

• R Campos, A Kandelbauer, K.H Robra, Artur Cavaco-Paulo, G.M Gübitz (2001). Indigo degradation with urified laccases from Trametes hirsute and Sclerotium rolfsii . Journal of Biotechnology; 131-139
• Dubé, E., Shareck, F., Hurtubise, Y. et al. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol (2008) 79: 597. Homologous cloning, expression and characterization of a laccase from Streptomyces coelicolor and enzymatic decolourisation of an indigo dye.
• J Margot, C Bennati-Granier, J Maillard, P Blánquez, D.A Barry, C Holliger (2013). Bacterial versus fungal laccase : potential for micropollutant degradation. ABM Express ; 3 :63.