Utah Lake is an important part of our valley, but its natural waters are plagued by harmful algal blooms otherwise known as “HABs”. These HABs break out across the state every summer, lasting well into the fall. The desert heat, nutrient-rich dust, and human activity are all contributing factors. With climate change lengthening the summers there is seemingly no end to the season of blooms.
Blooms, made from dangerous cyanobacteria, cause our serene water ways to become uninhabitable for wildlife and unusable for recreation. In 2023, parts of Zion National Park and Utah Lake were under a warning for months, which impacted tourism and recreation. Cyanobacteria’s toxins can cause various symptoms from benign to lethal, including nausea, vomiting, kidney damage and seizures.
The conservation of Utah Lake is not just a local issue, but also used worldwide as a standard example of cyanobacterial blooms. Excess nutrients entering Utah Lake led 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 machines, a continuation of last year's project.
The previous year’s UVU iGEM team ran out of time to fully implement its concepts and revise some parts that weren't working as expected. This year, we decided to continue the project with hopes of going further by learning from last year's team's mistakes and successes.
It is our hope to keep our waterways clean and free of toxins for all types of recreation. Bloom Buster™ is a genetically modified, non-toxic green algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, also known as “Chlamy” that works to remove nutrients that are crucial in the development of HABs without harming the ecosystem. Nitrogen and phosphorus are key in seeding the blooms; by removing them, we can starve out the algae and prevent them in the first place instead of focusing on post bloom cleanup.
The end goal of this project would be to deploy Bloom Buster chlamy as a tertiary treatment within wastewater facilities. This would lower the chances of our green algae leaving the facility and entering the lake. The secondary, long-term goal is to turn the sequestered nutrients into a marketable product.