Team:Peking
The problems of uranium contamination have aroused people’s concern. Uranium could cause health effects (harmful to liver, kidney and bones) and environment issue (chemical and radioactive hazard). Current treatment for uranium leak of nuclear power plants or uranium pollution around the ore-fields, such as ion exchange, flocculating setting and phytoremediation, all have limitations: high cost, low efficiency and tedious procedure.
To alleviate these problems, Peking iGEM team aims to construct a novel functional biomaterial consisting of multiple functional protein modules. This material is designed to be produced and secreted by bacteria, and automatically self-assemble to form a protein network. With the employment of a specific uranium-binding protein module, it obtains the capability to adsorb uranyl. After treating the polluted water in a very short time, the uranyl-binding biomaterial which contains another monomeric streptavidin module can be easily isolated by using biotinylated magnetic beads.
This uranyl-binding biomaterial shows many advantages, such as high specificity, high efficiency, self-assembly and self-reproduction. Besides, the uranyl-binding module can be replaced with other heavy metal ion binding proteins or fluorescent proteins for multi-functionality. By taking advantage of modularization in our design, more applications beyond uranium absorption can be developed.
