Team:Linkoping Sweden/Description
Problem
The International Panel on Climate Change reported conclusions that human activities over the past 50 years has lead to the increase in the earth’s temperature. Our modern industrial civilization has increased CO2-levels from 280 ppm to 400 ppm, much of the harm has been a result of human-produced greenhouse gases such as CO2, N2O and Methane.1 For example, any carbon based fuel that is burned will convert carbon to CO2, if not properly stored it will be released into the atmosphere thereby increasing CO2 levels. The earth surface is emitting IR-radiation and the CO2 prevent it from leaving the Earth surface and released into space by absorbing the radiation/heat, consequently contributing to an increase in temperature.^2 There has been plenty of discussions about other alternatives for fossil fuels and algae biofuels has proven to be a possible alternative. By utilizing algae there are some difficulties to overcome, for instance improvement and identification of strains - in terms of oil productivity and protection of crops.3 There are plenty of questions concerning this area, but the focus will be on answering these questions: How will an increased lipid synthesis be attained without damaging the reproductivity? How will this be controlled? Lastly, how will this be used in a larger scale?
Why did we choose this project?
As a result of global warming due to excessive use of fossil fuels the LiU iGEM 2016 team decided to contribute in the search of alternative green energy sources. As previously mentioned, C.reinhardtii have shown beneficial properties in conservation of energy but also for applications in synthetic biology by reason of its unicellularity and sequenced genome. The discovery of the problem with the inefficient lipid production in C.reinhardtii led to the idea of using a controllable CRISPR/Cas9 system for optimization of the metabolism.
What do we hope to accomplish with our project?
The aim of this year’s project is to verify that an inducible promotor can be used with CRISPR/Cas9 in the C.reinhardtii model algae. This will allow further modification of metabolic genes in the near future. A more distant future prospect is to make algae the most efficient source for biofuel production and to make a contribution for the well-being of our planet.
