Background
In the late 1960s, the Velsicol Chemical Corporation in St. Louis, Michigan discharged chemical waste into the Pine River, one of those pollutants being DDT. After thorough investigation within the historical literature, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports, and community testimonials, Alma iGEM knew that this issue needed our attention and resources.
For our project, we drafted a circuit, with the target of DDT and its binding abilities as a target. From this goal, our Wet Lab team has drafted and is finalizing data from our circuit to prove its detection capabilities. Additionally, our Wet Lab has successfully integrated a kill switch into our genetically engineered machine. This safety mechanism stemmed from an idea brought to us by our community as a way of them feeling more comfortable and reliable in our efforts to detect and begin a cleanup process for the local Pine River.
With the final measurements of the kill switch’s mechanisms, our Human Practices team will again reach out to community members to see if our killswitch answers their concerns. In addition, to conclude our project, we will be talking with and interviewing local residents, government officials, and farmers to better understand the human and industrial impact that DDT pollution has on the area. We will also be asking these residents what their expectations are for our device, and how a future product would be used in their lives. Their feedback will help us better determine the future of our project, and confirm that our project is in line with the needs and concerns of our community.
Project Summary
The Alma iGEM team will be working on a continuation of our three year project with the end goal of complete, working biosensor that detects DDT within the soil. The sensor is made up of three parts, a Rainbow Trout estrogen receptor, Tetracycline repressor, and a red fluorescent protein. In the presence of the pollutant of DDT, the bacteria will fluoresce red. In previous years, the DNA circuit was developed, manufactured, and transformed into E. coli cells, and as of now, the E. coli can grow with the DNA within it. However, with test results, the expression of the genes has become a burden on the cell. With this, Alma iGEM has focused our efforts this cycle to continue to test the circuit and workshop how to further development, while making sure the circuit can be expressed in full.
Contents
The Biosensor Circuit page covers our change in focus to produce a new composite part using the araC inverter. The araC inverter would take the place of the TET inverter giving us the plasmid rtER-araC-RFP.
The Kill Switch page covers the need for biosecurity and the concerns of the local community when working with E. coli. The improvements and modifications since last cycle show our engineering success in creating this layer of biosecurity.
The Human Practices page covers the Alma iGEM team's human practices work for the 2023 cycle. In it we discuss our interactions with a recent environmental crisis in the Pine River, a massive spike in water E. coli levels. Because of this environmental crisis, many people we spoke to were concerned with our use of E. coli in our biosensor, leading us to find a solution to regain our stakeholder’s trust.
The Education page covers the Alma iGEM team's work to give community members access to educational resources and improve the local community’s overall science literacy. The Alma iGEM team is committed to providing adequate education and resources to members of the Alma community and beyond.
The Integrated Human Practices page covers the Alma iGEM team's work in incorporating the advice, perspectives, and concerns our team has gotten about our project, and how we took this information to center our stakeholders in our project design. This page covers the design changes that were made in 2023 due to stakeholder input, and the series of modifications done to the project design in the past due to stakeholder and community engagement.