diff --git a/docs/description.md b/docs/description.md index 02eebc99f69a834fbfdd0a1d64ecbf9d2b61e868..ba8959ecb4691ce4b59d65626b2b25efa9499421 100644 --- a/docs/description.md +++ b/docs/description.md @@ -1,32 +1,72 @@ -# Team Section - - <div class="container text-center py-5"> - <h3>Building Team</h3> - <h4 class="text-muted">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, explicabo.</h4> - <div class="row row-cols-1 row-cols-md-3 g-4 py-5"> - <div class="col"> - <team - imageSrc="https://gitlab.igem.org/2024/msp-maastricht/-/raw/main/wiki/images_project_description/profile_images/profile_image_Devyani.png?ref_type=heads" - altText="User 1" - name="Leanne Graham" - description="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur, adipisicing elit. Blanditiis, neque." - /> - </div> - <div class="col"> - <team - imageSrc="https://gitlab.igem.org/2024/msp-maastricht/-/raw/main/wiki/images_project_description/profile_images/profile_image_Devyani.png?ref_type=heads" - altText="User 2" - name="Leanne Graham" - description="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur, adipisicing elit. Blanditiis, neque." - /> - </div> - <div class="col"> - <team - imageSrc="https://gitlab.igem.org/2024/msp-maastricht/-/raw/main/wiki/images_project_description/profile_images/profile_image_Devyani.png?ref_type=heads" - altText="User 3" - name="Leanne Graham" - description="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur, adipisicing elit. Blanditiis, neque." - /> - </div> - </div> - </div> +--- +title: Project Description +--- + +# Project Description + +"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought." — Albert Szent-Györgyi + +## General Project Description + +--- + +Our iGEM team MSP-Maastricht is dedicated to addressing coastal eutrophication through a sustainable and circular approach. This problem is particularly relevant to our team, as alleviating it is a step towards overcoming the nitrogen crisis faced by the Netherlands. Nitrogen pollution from agriculture, transport, and industry sectors has become a global concern. With agriculture being a major economic contributor of the Netherlands, excess fertilizer run-off has led to pollution of our many waterways. This then results in its spread into seawater, causing ocean acidification, anoxia, and algal blooms, which further exacerbate climate change (UNEP, 2019; KVK, 2023). To minimize damage from fertilizer leaching we propose nitrate assimilation from coastal waters, where the concentration is the highest, for single-cell proteins (SCPs) production. + +For this to be achieved, our team will utilize a genetically modified strain of *Vibrio natriegens (V. natriegens)*, which thrives in high-salinity environments. Through the genetic introduction of a nitrate transporter, nitrate reductase (Nas), and nitrite reductase (Nir) derived from *Klebsiella oxytoca*, the engineered organism can convert nitrates to ammonium, reducing the nutrient levels that cause harmful algal blooms and restoring ecosystem balance. + + + +**Figure 1.** Assimilatory nitrate (NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup>) reduction to ammonium (NH<sub>4</sub><sup>+</sup>) and conversion to SCPs pathway in *V. natriegens*. The enzymes from *Klebsiella oxytoca* (shown in blue) would be incorporated into the organism to engineer the NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup> assimilatory reduction to NH<sub>4</sub><sup>+</sup> pathway: addition of the NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup> transporter, NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup> reductase (Nas), and nitrite (NO<sub>2</sub><sup>–</sup>) reductase (Nir) enabling NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup> reduction to NH<sub>4</sub><sup>+</sup>. Further assimilation of NH<sub>4</sub><sup>+</sup> through the glutamine synthetase (GS) - glutamate synthase (GOGAT) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH)-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) pathways enable glutamate biosynthesis (Ohashi et al., 2011; van Heeswijk et al., 2013; Jiang & Jiao, 2016). This accelerates protein synthesis and growth promoting the accumulation of SCPs. Created with [BioRender.com](https://www.biorender.com/). + +For the prevention of the organism’s spread, potentially resulting in ecosystem imbalances, it will be encapsulated in a semi-permeable membrane chamber facilitating flow through whilst containing the GMO. This design aspect further facilitates the ease of harvesting our upcycled products. + +## The Problem + +--- + +With the rapid and sustained increase in population growth in the last 50 years, the agricultural sector has implemented the use of synthetic fertilizers to keep up with crop production. + + + +**Figure 2.** Increasing population dependency on synthetic fertilizers. To sustain the increasing population, a proportional increase in reliance on synthetic fertilizers can be observed. In 2015, this substantially increased to half the world’s population (Erisman et al., 2008). + + + +**Figure 3.** Loss of nitrogen to the environment across the world. Excessive use of fertilizers leads to nitrogen overload exacerbating the issue of nitrogen imbalance in soil and water (West et al., 2014). + +A major component in such fertilizers is nitrates. With this conventional intensification, accompanied by depleted soil from monocropping to sustain food and fodder demand, a large portion of fertilizer is unabsorbable. Their runoff into water bodies leads to eutrophication as the nitrates provide nutrients for algae, facilitating bloom. As such, the Netherlands’ position as a global agricultural powerhouse, with 54% of its surface area used as farmland, has led it to develop the worst water quality in the EU (Fraters et al., 2021). + + + +**Figure 4.** Global distribution of the marine eutrophication characterization factors in damage level units (Cosme & Hauschild, 2017). + + + +**Figure 5.** World map detailing marine dead zones, hypoxia-induced coral reef mortality, and coral reef presence and densities. High density of dead zones can be observed in the North Sea, attributed to the excess nitrogen run-off-induced hypoxia (Altieri et al., 2017). + +## Our Inspiration and Solution + +--- + +### Coastal Eutrophication + +As a team, we were primarily inspired by seeing the severe algal bloom state of our local water bodies, in particular, the pond situated next to our university library. + + + +**Figure 6.** De Vijf Koppen, Stadspark, Maastricht. Picture taken by our team member, Devyani Ravi, on June 7th, 2024. + +We immediately saw a need for new innovative solutions to manage and mitigate eutrophication. Noting the severity of the problem, our team was further inspired by freshwater eutrophication projects of previous iGEM teams ([Dusseldorf 2020](https://2020.igem.org/Team:Duesseldorf/Eutrophication), [Wageningen 2021](https://2021.igem.org/Team:Wageningen_UR), [Anatolia 2022](https://2022.igem.wiki/anatolia-college-hs/index.html), [Wego-Taipei 2022](https://2022.igem.wiki/wego-taipei/), [Bonn-Rherinbach 2023](https://2023.igem.wiki/bonn-rheinbach/)). The decision to focus on coastal areas was made for a more global approach, while simultaneously giving our team a concrete location for our GMO. + +### Background Information on *V. natriegens* + +*V. natriegens* is a gram-negative facultatively anaerobic marine bacterium (Thoma & Blombach., 2021). First isolated in 1958 from marsh mud from Sapelo Island in Georgia, it has only recently garnered interest from the scientific community due to the exceptional doubling time of less than 10 min (Payne, 1958). The optimal growth conditions for *V. natriegens* are 15 g/L NaCl, 37°C, and pH 7.6, closely matching those of the ocean (Weinstock et al., 2016). Due to its growth rate, *V. natriegens* has become the fastest-known organism, making it a promising candidate for protein production. + +However, many of the tools that have been developed for genetic modifications of model organisms (such as *E. coli*) are not applicable to *V. natriegens*. Therefore, we had to seek out other projects that attempted to tackle this issue and overcome these challenges. We were particularly inspired by the work of Imperial College London 2020’s iGEM team and the V. parahaemolyticus toolkit they designed for their project ([Imperial 2020](https://2020.igem.org/Team:Imperial_College)). This is the basis for the engineering of our own species. + +### Single-Cell Protein (SCP) Production + +SCPs are a nutrient-dense, sustainable, and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional protein sources (e.g., soya, livestock, and fish) produced from biomass such as bacteria. For decades, SCP production has been researched for its benefits to our nutrition (Gmoser et al., 2023). + +In our project, *V. natriegens* will be engineered to assimilate nitrate from coastal eutrophic water and convert it into SCPs through ammonium assimilation pathways. Here, the nitrate will be reduced into ammonium by nitrate and nitrite reductase, which will then be converted into glutamate by glutamine synthetase, glutamate synthase, and GDH (Ohashi et al., 2011). This further facilitates protein synthesis, particularly SCPs (Gmoser et al., 2023). +