Team:BNDS China
Abstract
Wild animal’s leathers have great values for the clothing and fashion industry. Some luxury products like crocodile bag even require leather from rare species. This profitable business drives poachers to illegally hunt and hurt those wild animals. The demands of leather put the wild animals in a dangerous place and the harms caused by poaching for species conservation is unthinkable. Therefore, we aimed to integrate bacterial cellulose and protein crosslinking to manufacture artificial leather for animal conservation. Specifically, we utilized G. xylinus to synthesize bacterial cellulose. Moreover, we engineered E. coli and P. Pastoris to purify collagen-like protein and spider fibroin with SpyCatcher003 and SpyTag003 for protein crosslinking. This synthetic biological method provides an alternative way to supply raw material for leather industry, while ensuring animal and environment conversation.
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BNDS_China 2020 is composed by 18 students and several advisors, instructors, and PIs. Click to see more details about our team members.
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BNDS_China aims to manufacture artificial leather via synthetic biology. We adopted the bacterial cellulose as the backbone and structural proteins for crosslinking. We produced bacterial cellulose by the fermentation of G. xylinus and purified proteins by P. pastoris and E. coli. Click to see more details.
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We did HP about the waste beer yeast and paper making technologies and integrated them into our project. Click to see more details in our HP webpage.
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We conducted our experiment in order to implement the final goal of our project. However, due to the current pandemic, we met tremendous challenge and difficulties. As a result, our lab achievements were not ideal, but some parts do make sense. Click to see more details about our result.
