A little bit about our project...
Climate change is one of the largest problems threatening present and future generations, resulting from the deterioration of our ozone layer and the accumulation of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), of which methane (CH4) is a primary contributor. To approach this problem, we want to look at a natural, biological method to produce eco-friendly and sustainable products from GHGs, leading us to bacteria that consume CH4. Methanotrophic bacteria (methanotrophs) are organisms that utilize CH4 as their main food and energy source, but currently only naturally produce products with limited applications to the bioeconomy. Using the iGEM Anderson Promoter Series, however, which are a collection of promoter sequences that lead to the controlled expression of certain genes, we aim to genetically engineer a strain of methanotrophs to our advantage. Having greater control over the products that methanotrophs produce will allow us to reduce the amount of CH4 in the atmosphere while simultaneously producing valuable products that displace petroleum-derived materials. By characterizing the Anderson series promoter genetic parts (which have not been characterized inmethanotrophs) in industrially relevant methanotrophs Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) and Methylosinus trichosporium (Ob3b), we can further expand the current methanotroph genetic toolkit for genetic engineering of these bacteria to address vast environmental concerns such as climate change and global warming.
We have all seen the data dictating how climate change is affecting us globally, but our team has seen first-hand how it affects us locally as well. As many life-long Texans have witnessed, our climate is changing drastically, and we are all just coping with the changes. According to the EPA our rainstorms have become harsher and more damaging, our coastline is being swallowed up by rising sea levels, and droughts and wildfires fueled by increasing Texas heat are threatening local forests and agriculture. Living in a state that is home to oil fields and natural gas deposits makes it difficult to continue to work towards solutions for climate change, as a large number of Texans have a vested interest in seeing the oil and gas industry continue to grow. However, our iGEM team believes that developing adaptable and versatile tools for methanotroph genetic engineering is vital in mitigating the harm to our state and the world due to climate change. By quantifying the activity of the Anderson promoters in methanotrophs, we can provide synthetic biology technology that is easy to work with and useful in many different scenarios. By using these quantified promoters to drive the production of value-added products derived from greenhouse gasses, we can provide an example of how valuable methanotrophs can be utilized to reduce the harmful effects of climate change both locally and globally.
More in-depth into our project, our decision to work with the Anderson promoters came down to these promoters’ unique ability to express our desired genes at a constant rate, with minimal impact of internal and external cellular factors on transcriptional rates. Promoters are incredibly important in controlling the rate of gene expression as they act as a binding site for RNA polymerase, the enzyme responsible for initiating transcription. Our goal is that by characterizing the Anderson promoters in methanotrophs, we will have greater control of gene transcription in these biocatalysts enabling beneficial downstream applications and the production of value-added products from GHGs.
Our original project goal was to characterize the Anderson Promoters in e. coli, m. capsulatus bath, and Ob3B and provide a comparison of their respective activities in each organism as well as their dynamic range in each organism. We achieved this goal and discovered there was a large gap in the dynamic range of the Anderson series in methanotrophs, and so we decided to try and create our own library through mutagenesis of a highly succesful promoter in bath, methane monooxygenase. We were succesful in doing so and have even managed to obtain preliminary data about this new promoter library's activity in bath and e.coli. This research will allow us to in the future achieve our original goal of finding a promoter activity that suits our uses in expressing a valuable synthetic product from metabolically engineered ethanotrophs while taking harmful GHG's out of our atmosphere and providing an additional useful method to mitigate the harm that is being done to our environment daily via GHG's.
Papers will go here...