Team:Aachen
Get Energized!
with iGEM Aachen's
Magnetic
ATP
Recycling
System
The complex regeneration of biochemical energy sources represents a cost-intensive hurdle for many production and research processes. With M.A.R.S., we want to establish an
innovative strategy to create light-powered, mitochondrion-like protocells and a bioreactor that will recycle those cells by magnetism. Through the design of our reusable recycling
system it will be able to power every ATP-driven enzyme cascade, making M.A.R.S. universally applicable. By extracting bacteriorhodopsin out of Halobacterium salinarum,
a phototrophic archaea species, and combining it with an ATP synthase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae in self-produced polymersomes and liposomes, we get simple but effective
chassis, which make it possible to cover the energy requirement of any enzyme reaction cascade. Binding those chassis to magnet particles via anchor peptides enables the
reuse of the entire protocell system within the reactor by means of magnetic purification, whereby they can be fed directly into enzyme cascades, without depending on living cells.
B
E
S
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Gold Medal
First Runner-up Overgraduate Grand Prize
Project M.A.R.S. launched successfully thanks to the motivation and effort of the Team as well as the help of people supporting us. We are so grateful that we
could always turn to so many people whenever we needed advice or help. We thank both those who supported us with their knowledge and skills as well as those who funded us.
These people powered us to make biochemical reactions get energized:
These people powered us to make biochemical reactions get energized: