| KULeuven - iGEM 2024

40% of our planet’s lakes and rivers have been polluted by heavy metals[1]

140 million people across 50 countries drink water that contains arsenic at levels higher than the WHO’s reference value of 10ug/L[2]

Heavy metal exposure has already been linked with several human diseases and damaged organ systems[3]

The Growing Demand for Critical Metals

With increasing complexity of technology and a growing population, humans need more and more metals.

Their Great Importance In Our Economy

A lot of these metals are critical resources, meaning that they are both of high economic importance and at supply risk [4].

Addressing Health and Environmental Risks in Mining

We currently obtain these metals from traditional mining practices. These threaten the health of miners and leave toxic tailings behind. Additionally, building new mines puts ecologically important regions at risk.

The Environmental Impact of Metal Waste from Mining

At the same time, 40% of our planet’s lakes and rivers have been polluted by heavy metals [1]. Sources include mining practices, industry outlets and domestic waste.

Impact of Metals on Ecosystems and Human Health

Metals in the environment can cause harm to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and human health.

Existing Wastewater Treatment is Insufficient

Current methods of wastewater decontamination have limited metal recovery capacity, they use hazardous chemicals in the leaching process and have low efficacy in low metal concentrations.

Recognizing these problems, we embarked on developing a biomining strategy that could decontaminate wastewater and contribute to a circular economy by recycling the metals.

Explore More Resources

We engineered bacteria to take up metals from the environment by expressing proteins with a high affinity for specific metals. Our engineered bacteria are mixed with wastewater where they bind to their target metals.

Find out more about our measurements

Our project encourages a circular economy and contributes to less metal pollution in the environment and more place for nature, by reducing the amount of mining cites needed. We highly value our sustainability collaborations as well.

Find out more about our sustainability efforts

Synthetic biology will shape all of our futures, it is therefore important that everyone has the ability to learn about it. In order to have truly sustainable changes, science and industry need to be representative. We want to show that science is for everyone.

Find out more about our inclusivity actions

This way we prevent the metals from contaminating the environment and we close the circle of metal recycling, combatting wast of valuable metals.

References

[1]Zhou, Q., Yang, N., Li, Y., Ren, B., Ding, X., Bian, H., & Yao, X. (2020). Total concentrations and sources of heavy metal pollution in global river and lake water bodies from 1972 to 2017. Global Ecology and Conservation, 22, e00925-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e00925

[2]Bolisetty, S., Peydayesh, M., & Mezzenga, R. (2019). Sustainable technologies for water purification from heavy metals: review and analysis. Chemical Society Reviews, 48(2), 463–487. https://doi.org/10.1039/c8cs00493e

[3] Zamora-Ledezma, C., Negrete-Bolagay, D., Figueroa, F., Zamora-Ledezma, E., Ni, M., Alexis, F., & Guerrero, V. H. (2021). Heavy metal water pollution: A fresh look about hazards, novel and conventional remediation methods. Environmental Technology & Innovation, 22, 101504-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2021.101504

[4] European Comission (2023).Study on the EU’s list of Cricial Raw Materials - Final Report. https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/publications/study-critical-raw-materials-eu-2023-final-report_en