Team:Hong Kong CityU/Entrepreneurship
Abstract
The extensive use of plastics in recent decades has led to an increasing amount of plastic wastes which consist of non-biodegradable and non-incinerable plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyurethane (PUR). These wastes are discarded into the environment causing serious environmental pollution problems. This has inspired our team to search for effective scientific options to help reduce plastic pollution. In this project, we have adopted an in-silico mutagenesis approach to design two PUR-degrading enzymes - papain and polyurethanase esterase A (PueA) - that could be used to enhance PET and PUR biodegradation. Ultimately, we are aiming to construct a multi plastic-degrading E. coli bug by combining the genes of the two mutant enzymes (papain and PueA) with the well-studied polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase (PETase) gene in a single biobrick. It is hoped that this technology will contribute to reducing plastic wastes and help better protect our environment.
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Entrepreneurship
Best Supporting Entrepreneurship Special Prize
The Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award recognizes exceptional effort to build a business case and commercialize an iGEM project. This award is open to all teams to show that entrepreneurship is something all teams can aspire to do with their project. This award can go to an new project, or to a previous project that a team aimed to commercialize. Have you filed a provisional patent on your project/device/process? Have you raised money to build and ship products? Have you pitched your idea to investors and received money? As always in iGEM, the aim is to impress the judges!
To compete for the Best Supporting Entrepreneurship prize, please describe your work on this page and also fill out the description on the judging form.
Inspiration
You can look at what other teams did to get some inspiration!
Here are a few examples:
Patents and intellectual property
If your team is seriously considering commercializing and looking into building a company after the competition, you may want to look at how you are going to protect your work and secure investment. Investors will usually require some form of intellectual protection, so you may want to investigate how to apply for a patent or provisional patent in your country and region before disclosing your project at iGEM. Remember that you can only be evaluated in iGEM based on what you share on your wiki and at the Jamboree, so any work you don't present can't count towards your project.
This is an area where we are different as we care about sharing, openness and contributing to the community and investors don't always agree with these values. It is up to you and your team to decide what to do. Remember that most universities have a commercialization department and that you can talk to them before coming to a decision.