Alma iGEM has continued our efforts over the past three years for the benefit of our surrounding community members of the Gratiot County Area. Our focus is the waterway pollution that began in 1951, at the Velsicol Chemical Corporation plant in St. Louis Michigan, a neighboring city of our college community. As of 2022, the EPA has begun their work to clean up the area. From their website, they stated, “On the week of October 17, 2022, EPA and EGLE are starting a new cleanup phase at the former Velsicol plant site. This new phase consists of excavating approximately 100,000 tons of contaminated soil from the southern portion of the former Velsicol Plant property and trucking this material off-site for disposal in a permitted landfill.” In addition they also stated, “The in-place thermal treatment on the former plant site was completed in the fall of 2021 and approximately 386,000 pounds of contaminants were removed from the soil.”
These difficult procedures and clean up mechanisms are costing the EPA and the state of Michigan millions of dollars in work and time. Even with disposal, the DDT contaminated soil is destined for a landfill, awaiting its “disposal”. This mechanism of disposal substantially increases the risk that the DDT polluted soil and terrain may be spread elsewhere, invade the soil and water systems, thus continuing its damage to the ecosystem.
At Alma iGEM, we intend on focusing our synthetic biology efforts on St. Louis, Michigan, and further addressing the ecological pollution problem to restore the damage to the Pine River’s ecosystem and surrounding areas.
During our four year endeavor, we have genetically engineered a biosensor utilizing the properties of E. coli to produce a reaction from the red fluorescence protein integrated within our machine in the presence of DDT. With this reaction we aim to produce a bacterium that can allow for specific detection of DDT in a sample modeleed in such a way as a pool pH level kit would work; mixing a sample of water with our bacteria as a detection measure.
Through our research of DDT, Alma has chosen to focus on the agonistic hormone behavior of DDT with estrogen in a biological pathway. With this approach, this allows for safe testing in our laboratory setting. Additionally, safety measures were implemented after several discussions with community members about the potential misuse and accidental release age of a synthetic biology manufactured machine into the ecosystem. With this we decided to implement a kill switch which permits for a broad screening of the DDT spectrum within affected areas. The effects of these implementations to our machine provide benefits that include minimizing cost of remediation, increase in efficiency, and better utilization of resources when it comes to testing for contamination. For example, in local practice, the biosensor can be used to detect DDT in suspected samples, and proposes testing prices to be around $5. This price point will be of value for those with a vested interest in the remediation of the Pine River. One such organization is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These are the first steps towards cleaning up our river, the superfund site, and to be used anywhere in the U.S, or world that has an issue with DDT in their environment.