Authors: Elise Bennett, Zenos Thoreson, Blaise Bartlett, Jacob McFadden, Melanie Rosa, Nathan Walker, Logan Fenn, Eric Domyan, Colleen Hough
Mentors: Eric Domyan, Colleen Hough
Insitution: Utah Valley University
A team of 13 biotech students competed in the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Paris, France in the Bioremediation category. The iGEM Foundation is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote education and collaboration for the advancement of synthetic biology. The Grand Jamboree is a 4-day expo where students, academics, investors, industry representatives, journalists, and the public gather while student teams from around the world compete for medals and awards by following the engineering cycle, design, build, test, learn (DBTL) with living organisms. Our team chose to focus on bioremediation of Utah Lake because, not only is it a local issue, it is also used worldwide as an example of toxic algal blooms. Excess nutrient loading in Utah Lake is causing eutrophication, which leads to increased algal 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 environmental sources. 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 microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as the chassis for the genetically engineered machine. A second, long-term goal would be to turn the sequestered nutrients into a product that is usable to the local community. We have a responsibility to the local community, native people, plants, and animals to restore Utah Lake to its natural beauty to be respectably and responsibly shared by all.