Project Description

Our Project

Utah Lake is an important part of our valley, but harmful algal blooms in its waters have led to human and animal illness. Our university's main campus is located within 20 minutes drive of the lakeshore. After discussing different local issues, we decided to focus on reducing harmful algal blooms in Utah Lake.

We chose to focus on bioremediation of Utah Lake because it's not just a local issue, but also used worldwide as an example of cyanobacterial blooms. Excess nutrients entering Utah Lake are causing increased eutrophication, which leads to increased cyanobacterial blooms that produce toxins hazardous to human, animal, and aquatic life. The excess nutrients are composed mostly of nitrogen and phosphorous compounds that enter the lake primarily from wastewater treatment plants, runoff fertilizer, and naturally occurring inorganic resources.

Our goal is to reduce the nutrient load of wastewater entering the lake by engineering a harmless organism to sequester phosphorus and convert nitrogenous compounds to atmospheric nitrogen, which is biologically inert. We chose the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as the chassis for our genetically engineered machine. Our idea is to not deploy our project directly into Utah Lake, but within water treatment facilities. This would lower the chances of our green algae leaving the facility and entering the lake. A second, long-term goal would be to turn the sequestered nutrients into a marketable product.

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