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Welcome to iGEM Panama Wiki

Abstract

Our SynBio Project for iGEM 2011

Since late April 2010, the world has experienced a devastating oil spill throughout the Gulf of Mexico that has become one of the worst environmental disasters in worldwide history. Oil spills can pollute air and water and alter ecosystems for years. For this reason, last year’s Panama team designed a BioBrick that can biosynthesize rhamnolipids under the presence of rhamnose and β-hydroxyalkanoic acids. Rhamnolipids have emulsifying properties that reduce the surface tension of water, making the hydrocarbons easier to recover and biodegrade. This year we want to create a BioBrick that provides rhamnose for rhamnolipid biosynthesis and for other purposes as well. We also want to create a bioremediation system using existing biobricks that will produce the rhamnolipid while biodegrading the hydrocarbons in vivo. The system will be designed to operate with a lysis gene that will kill the cells once bioremediation of the contamination site is complete.