Background

iGEM UT-Tokyo

Background

Microorganisms are of critical importance in our ecosystems since they play a roll of natural decomposer. If it were not for microbes, the earth might become awash with fallen leaves, dead bodies and other debris. Bioremediation is an idea of utilizing this bacterial property to fight pollution. Synthetic biology wil make it possible to create microorganisms that are specialized for this task, thereby allowing implementation of high efficiencies.

In the past iGEM competitions, quite a few teams have developed devices for bioremediation. Most of the projects focused on the method to deal with substrates (collection, reduction, etc...) and the efficiency of the system was not emphasized. We predict that many projects require an enormous amount of time to complete the task using realistic concentrations of microorganisms.

To solve this problem, we designed a "Self-Mustering with Aspartate-Responsive Taxis (SMART) System." The basic strategy of the SMART system is quite simple. "The higher the concentration of microorganisms around the substrate, the better the efficiency of bioremediation." Take a look at the two movies below, and you will see microorganisms decompose the substrate much more rapidly with SMART system. From this simulation, we could say that

In short, SMART system is designed in such a way so it is applicable to allow bioremediation of various substrates with good efficiency.

In the System page, we will introduce details of our SMART system.