Team:FCB-UANL

Mexico's northern biogeographic region is home to wide biodiversity, which is at risk due to the frequent forest wildfires. One of the strategies to combat fires involves the use of firefighting foams, but these usually contain fluorosurfactants (PFOs), which pose an environmental threat. Therefore, our goal is to produce an eco-friendly alternative to this type of threatening substances. To do so, we plan to employ synbio tools to produce four of the Ranaspumin proteins present in the bubble nests of Leptodactylidae frogs, and regulating B. subtilis’ natural complex metabolic pathway in charge of synthesizing its biofilm’s matrix components for us to substitute PFOs as foaming agents in firefighting mixtures. Not only will our project aid the environment, but it will also allow underfunded fire departments to access these tools because, as there are no foam producers in this country, current foams are very expensive due to importation costs.