Team:Cambridge/Brainstorm

Coming up with an actual 'big idea' looks to be one of the hardest parts, so it seems to be a good idea to get as many wacky ideas down on paper / up on the web as possible, and now seems like a good time to start.

Cool Ideas

In no particular order. Please add in explanation / expansion as you feel necessary.
Seeing as none of us are really sure of the boundaries, don't worry about making silly suggestions!

Carbon Sequestration

i.e Removing carbon from the atmosphere

a) a cycle process developable for formation of ethylene from CO2 and allows us to test multicellular/ differentiated processes and b) potential solar source of energy if we use cyanobacteria as products of photosynthesis here is protons and electrons.

Catalytic Converters / Removing chemicals from emissions

Current catalytic converters use a platinum catalysts - quite expensive. perhaps consider it from the perspective of removing catalyst posioning or finding better catalytic methods.

Water Treatment / Filtration

Or even a way of detecting whether water is contaminated or not.

Soil Fertilisation / Monitoring

Release of Nitrogen when necessary

Plastic degradation

decompose plastic bags/speed up the degradation process

Hydrogen producing bacteria

Malaria Diagnosis (or other diseases)

Many diseases are hard to diagnose in the field - they require at least rudimentary lab skills & equipment. EDIT: for Malaria, devices exist for the use in the field but are not very sensitive

Curing Cholera

(I may have to leave this explanation to a biologist.)

Diabetes

Implant to release insulin on demand based on blood sugar levels.

Drug Delivery Mechanism/Tissue Recognition

A lot of systems have been engineered which deliver the drugs when it reaches the target destination but not many address the issue of how does the bacteria identify the target site. Is there a way to flexibly code a destination site?

Magnetic Bacteria

Quality and size -- enzymatic biosensers

Highly Sensitive Olfactory Indicator

Look at this from another angle? Detection of explosives? No - explosive ‘smell’ is too varied; and so bacterial sensors are too specific for this application.

Working with GMOs

In our brainstorming we considered safety from the start. Working with genetically modifies organisms (GMOs) poses potential risks -- not just to ourselves -- in a number of ways. Here are some potential 'dangerous experiments':

• Demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective
• Confer resistance to clinically useful antibiotics or antivirals
• Enhance virulence of a pathogen or activate a non-pathogen
• Increase transmissability of a pathogen
• Alter the host range of a pathogen
• Enable the evasion of a diagnostic technique
• Develop a biological agent that has potential to be used as a weapon

In our preliminary work we used E. coli strain K12, which is multiply disabled and non-pathogenic. However, highly virulent strains of E. coli do exist and so the concerns outlined above are especially relevant, and led us to reject a number of project proposals.