Team:Ain Shams-Egypt/Description
Project Description Abstract: The world population consumes approximately 3500 kWh/y/capita, increasing the demand for clean alternative energy. Recent improvements of photo-bioelectrochemical cells (PBEC), which harness electrons from photosynthesis to generate electricity, include synthetic attachment of chloroplast thylakoids to graphene electrodes. However, current attachment techniques require costly chemically synthesized linkers and PBECs are not yet efficient enough for industrial energy generation. In this project, DNA aptamers were designed and evaluated as low-cost biological linkers to tether plant photosystem II (PSII) complexes to graphene foam electrodes. Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX), together with software developed by team Heidelberg 2015 (MAWS and JAWS) were used to develop PSII- and graphene-binding DNA aptamer candidates. This project aims to improve the attachment and orientation of the PSII complex to the graphene electrode for higher electron transfer efficiency, and serves as a prototype for the in planta expression of RNA aptamers for self-assembling thylakoid attachment.
Photo-bioelectrochemical cells hold great potential as clean, alternative energy sources. A major barrier is the attachment, efficiency and cost of the system, making scalability unfeasible. Particularly, synthetic linkers used for thylakoid attachment to electrodes are expensive and difficult to manufacture at sufficient scale.
Our aim with this project is to design and construct an optimized photo-bioelectrochemical cell using an in planta RNA aptamer synthetic biology strategy for self-assembling attachment of plant thylakoids to graphene-coated anodes.
