Team:KULeuven/Applications

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Applications

Our project, E.D.Frosti can stimulate ice crystallization and ice melting depending on the given stimulus. We’ve already discussed the safety (https://2011.igem.org/Team:KULeuven/Safety") of this project but what could be the major benefits for people all over the world? Let’s go over some possible applications of our E.D.Frosti.

Let’s start with the possibilities of inducing ice crystallization. Thinking big we could save the arctic by inhibiting its meltdown, but also on a smaller scale mankind could be helped. As our thermodynamic data show, the degree of supercooling will be lowered in the presence of Ice Nucleating Proteins. This means that ice crystallization will start at higher temperatures, and significant amounts of energy can be saved during the cooling process wherein ice is generated. Possible applications which will benefit from this energy saving can be in the medical sector, in which ice formation can be used in storage units for transplantation organs, or the generation of ice packs for cryotherapy. In addition, stimulating ice formation can be used to generate ice skating facilities, either outdoors, on lakes or rivers, or indoors, where vast amounts of energy, and thus money, can be saved to cool the water to the point of ice formation. But why stop here? As we have proven that the INP system works, why not adapt it to work in a healthy bacterium (such as several lactobacillus casei species) and use it to make ice popsicles in an energy-friendly manner?

Looking at the AntiFreeze Proteins, our data demonstrate that they can be used to lower the ice nucleation point, i.e. lower the temperature at which ice will start to form. As such, they could be helpful to restrain ice formation on roads. As we pointed out in our safety analysis, using proteins instead of salt could be more beneficial for the environment. Additionally, farmers could use E.D.Frosti to spray on their crops to protect them against frost. This could lead to an enormous gain, both economically as ecologically, since a lot of blossoms freeze every year when there is a late freezing period.

Furthermore, by freezing or defrosting ice, the albedo, the reflecting power of the surface, changes. Ice has an albedo of 0.85; this means it will reflect sunbeams causing the surroundings to become very bright. In winter, when solar hours are limited, it is better to have more snow and ice because it makes the environment seem brighter and in this way people are less affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder = winter depression)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder 1]. Therefore, our bacteria could help maintaining the stimulation of ice formation (of course on non-hazardous places like gardens and roadsides).

But we have to be honest; there could be some drawbacks of our project. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” and that is what we did. The worst case scenarios possible due to failure of our organism can be found in the safety text on our website. Even if we build in a cell death safety system in our bacterium, there are still risks when releasing it into the environment. One major case to be discussed is the public opinion of releasing bacteria into the environment. If they survive, even with the cell death mechanism, they could cause changes in top down- bottom up ecological interactions or even be hazardous. These risks could be minimized by purifying the proteins as these are the only necessary functional parts. However, this would greatly increase the costs thereby decreasing the economical benefits. Thus, the main question remains if the advantages are good enough to convince people to release our synthetically engineered organisms. This is one of the reasons why we organized a debate at our university where we talked about the ethics of synthetic biology.

References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

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