Team:Botchan Lab Tokyo

Currently, there is a lot of nicotine being released into the environment.Nicotine, as a hormone disruptor, has an adverse effect on the ecosystem. Therefore, we propose to convert nicotine into useful substances using genetic engineering technology to create a "Nico-friendly" society that protects the ecosystem.

Now, we have looked at where the nicotine in the environment comes from. As you know, nicotine is found in cigarettes. Nicotine, which has a negative impact on the ecosystem, is released from cigarette butts that wash up in the ocean. Then,Why do people litter their cigarette butts? One of the reasons for this is because we believe that cigarette butts are "worthless". So what happens when a cigarette butt becomes valuable? How can we change the world?

We focused on an organism that can break down nicotine, Pseudomonas putida S16, and we wanted to synthesize an organism that could convert nicotine into a useful substance. We wanted to synthesize an organism that could use this metabolic pathway to convert nicotine into a useful substance, 5-aminolevulinic acid. Our ultimate goal is to use genetic engineering techniques to add value to cigarette butts and stop the release of nicotine into the environment.