Team:UFAM-UEA Brazil/Design

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Design

Greed is destroying natural resources in a fast track! Mercury is one of the major contaminants in Amazonian rivers. To enhance microbial performance in mercury bioremediation, we developed a very original system on both molecular and physical design: a new set of strong promoters regulated by MerR, sensible to mercury, to improve and increase the mer operon expression (https://2016.igem.org/Team:UFAM-UEA_Brazil/Project/NewPromoters); with this we could increase the bioremediation removing 97% of the mercury in media when linked with the Operon Mer. The library is also important to offer promoter to several industrial processes and as guide to a great efficiency and could be suitable for other heavy metal operators, as a genetic referential. As second part of our design we built the first (real) bioreactor to treat mercury contaminated water and using our chassis carrying our synthetic genetic circuits! We had the awesome experience working with fermentation experts and see our system working. The interesting was to build it in a DIY way we had from 6L of media, with 5ug/mL, 69% of bioremediation in less than one day. Making it happen gave the ultimate proof of concept and was the first step to have this synbio system working out there, in the real world (https://2016.igem.org/Team:UFAM-UEA_Brazil/Project/ScaleUpBioreactor).