About This Project
Our team seeks to engineer a microorganism that will bind to the valuable copper-containing mineral chalcopyrite and separate it from the toxic, arsenic-containing mineral enargite. With the world supply of high quality copper decreasing every year, we need to start utilizing less pure sources of copper to meet our ever rising demands. The separation of chalcopyrite and enargite could allow us to utilize previous untapped sources of copper.Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
Recently, demand for copper has increased exponentially. With its application in many everyday items, it's no surprise that the mineral is so lucrative.
Good news: our planet has enough easily accessible copper to support us for the next 5 million years.
Bad news: most accessible copper is found in complex mixtures that cannot easily be separated with our current technology.
Our project focuses on chalcopyrite (the most common copper-bearing ore in the Earth’s crust) and a highly toxic arsenic-containing mineral known as enargite. Currently, high temperature smelting is the only means of separating the two. However, when enargite concentrations exceed 0.5% of the total ore by mass, smelting becomes hazardous as liberating dangerous concentrations of arsenic vapor becomes a reality.
What is the significance of this project?
This biological approach provides an alternative in mineral processing that involves fewer harmful chemicals, greater selectivity and better recovery of metals in complex or lower grade ores. Furthermore, this technology may remediate tailings and waste, allowing us to one day enrich more metals out of less rock. Such an implication can have significant effects financially and environmentally for the mining industry, thereby creating a more sustainable future.
What are the goals of the project?
We will express a set of peptides that selectively bind to chalcopyrite in an aquatic bacterium with a well-studied network of surface proteins. After binding to the chalcopyrite, separation will be triggered by the formation of gas vesicles (gas bubbles) within the cell, changing the overall density of chalcopyrite and allowing separation.
We will attempt to:
- Express a set of chalcopyrite-binding peptides on the surface of Caulobacter crescentus.
- Test the strength and selectivity of the peptide-chalcopyrite binding when the peptide is expressed on C. crescentus.
- Express a set of gas vesicle forming proteins in C. crescentus.
- Test how quickly chalcopyrite, covered in our gas vesicle forming C. crescentus, will float to the top of the solution, away from the denser enargite.
Budget
We need funds to pay for cloning supplies (PCR, restriction, and ligation enzymes, primers, and competent cells), personal protective equipment(PPE), as well as medium for culturing Caulobacter crescentus. We need the Qiagen Kits to purify the DNA from the bacteria colony. Furthermore, we need sequencing to confirm the identity of all our genetic parts, and allow easier 3rd party access/use of our system. Since sequencing requires expensive equipment we have to rely on 3rd party pay by use suppliers, which can be rather expensive. Moreover, plane tickets and registration fees are incredibly expensive for all of our team members to travel to the international competition in the United States. We really wish everyone on the team can go to this world championship and have an experience of what an international competition is like, as well as to share the fruits of our research with other teams from all over the world.
Meet the Team
Team Bio
Our enthusiastic team, consisting of undergraduates, graduate students and professional scientists, is excited to be apart of a project that pushes the boundaries in developing novel synthetic biology techniques. We from a wide array of backgrounds, including microbiology, computer science, and engineering physics. Our main goal is to successfully produce a mechanism that will provide a sustainable and rewarding solution to problems not currently being tackled in the mining industry. By doing so, we hope to further popularize the growing field of synthetic biology into industries that would likely need it. The UBC iGEM team aims to become a leading group in synthetic biology research and provide technologies that will further improve how we deal with the biological world around us.UBC iGEM
Our enthusiastic team, consisting of undergraduates, graduate students and professional scientists, is excited to be apart of a project that pushes the boundaries in developing novel synthetic biology techniques. We from a wide array of backgrounds, including microbiology, computer science, and engineering physics.
Press and Media
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a world leader in molecular biology, genetics, bioinformatics, microbiology and the applied sciences. Similarly, UBC strives to become a world leader in the emerging field of synthetic biology, which holds incredible potential in treating diseases, producing biofuels and remediating environments, to name a few. iGEM at UBC introduces and trains our most brilliant and motivated students as leaders in synthetic biology research and is nurturing some of the most promising scientific talent in Canada.The 2014 UBC iGEM team is composed of 17 undergraduates, 6 graduate student adviors and a faculty advisor from the department of Microbiology and Immunology. The team members stem from a wide range of science and engineering disciplines. From 2009 to 2013, the UBC iGEM team has won four gold medals at iGEM competitions advancing them to world championships at MIT as well as three “Best Mathematical Model” award in North America and has therefore established a worldwide reputation as a leading institution in iGEM. Moreover, the UBC iGEM has introduced many students and faculty at UBC to research in synthetic biology through presentations, conferences and primary research in laboratory settings.
With 6 returning undergraduate members, 2 returninggraduate advisors and 15 brilliant new members carrying out a project in the field of biominig and fundamental advances to synthetic biology and directed evolution, the 2014 UBC iGEM team is well-positioned to excel at the iGEM World Championships this November with high expectations of achieving a finalist spot in the New Applications track. Previous UBC iGEM projects can be found here: http://2012.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia http://2013.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia
Project Backers
- 2Backers
- 1%Funded
- $15Total Donations
- $7.50Average Donation