Describe how and why you chose your iGEM project.
More than 10 years have passed since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was triggered by the disaster. A lot of radioactive substances released by the accident came down with rain in Fukushima prefecture. After the accident, decontamination work was implemented. Radioactive contaminated soil from the work is managed in an Interim Storage Facility(ISF) around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
There are 14 million m3 of contaminated soil in the ISF, but no recycling method has been established so far. To resolve this problem, we are going to design a biological system that can effectively use the soil and convert radiation energy into electrical or chemical energy.
We are going to design a biological system to convert radiation energy to electrical or chemical energy. For this reason, we are using “Melanin” and “Electrochemically Active Bacteria”.
Melanin have two properties. One of the properties is protecting organism against UV and radiation. The other one is releasing an electron when radiation is irradiated.
EAB is used for Microbal Fuel Cell(MFC). It has Extracellular Electron Transfer(EET) pathway to release an electron to extracellular from intracellular and the electron is catched in an electrode. Thereby, electricity is generated.
We are gointg to transduce melA, a gene coding tyrosinase that synthesise melanin, and express melanin in EAB. That makes EAB to resistance radiation and to transport an electron which is released by radiation using EET pathway from melanin. From the above, EAB will be able to live in radioactive contaminated soil and we can get better power generation efficiency of MFC. Furthermore, we will develop a technology to express melanin in periplasmic space.