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The University of Calgary iGEM team aims to build a biosensor for naphthenic acids. Naphthenic acids are a family of organic acids that are toxic to terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, and are waste products of the bitumen extraction process. Naphthenic acids are stored in on-site settling ponds called tailing ponds; not only do they poison the environment, but they also contribute to the corrosion of refinery equipment, which directly increases maintenance and replacement costs. Currently, sophisticated and expensive procedures such as mass spectroscopy and gas chromatography are needed to identify and assess the concentration of naphthenic acids in solution. A bacterial sensor, if developed, could greatly improve the cost- and time-efficiency of naphthenic acid detection, and facilitate a workable approach for remediation.

Building a Naphthenic Acid Biosensor

This project is separated into four subcomponents:

The first is an examination of the native tailings pond genus Pseudomonas using ChIP-Seq, and attempting to find a naphthenic acid-sensitive promoter which can then be assembled with a reporter system. The second component involves constructing and characterizing an electrochemical reporter system that can produce quantifiable output without the need for optical measurements. This way, even cloudy tailings pond water can yield useful results. At the same time, we are also examining another potential chassis to detect and report naphthenic acids, in the microalgae Chlamydomonas. Finally, a software tool is currently in development that we hope will be able to locate and report degrees of non-homology between two separate genomes.

More details on the biosafety of our project can be found on our safety page.