Harvesting solar power with anthocyanins iGEM Team TU Darmstadt 2014 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Harvesting solar power with anthocyanins iGEM Team TU Darmstadt 2014

Electricity & Poverty 8 UN Millennium Development Goals to fight hunger & poverty Access to electricity leads to • Additional hours spent learning by children • Additional productivity • Improved health • Increased household net income Africa at night in 2014 2

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) vs. classical solar cells DSCs (or Grätzel cells) are • Cheaper • Don’t need rare metals • More environment-friendly than classical solar cells DSCs can • Utilize diffuse light • Light from every angle • Be used in warm regions 3

Dye-sensitized solar cells 4

Anthocyanins • Flavonol derived plant pigments • Found in higher plants • Can be used effectively in Grätzel cells • Heterologous production in E. coli feasible 5

Application scenario Local industry Government / NGOs Conclusions: Purchasing Developing Providing machines 1. Project will be applied in hot rural areas concepts capital Selling DSCs Villagers Local partner 2. Adjusting our pathway Training Purchasing Lending Cooperation DSCs 3. Examining “soft” aspects by a techno -moral vignette money Local microcredit DSC producer bank 6

Meeting the experts Visiting Prof. Dr. Grätzel and Dr. Toby Meyer of Solaronix 7

Why in E. coli ? • Broad variety of anthocyanins in plants • Production yield in plants not predictable pelargonidin • Easy extraction from E. coli • No unwanted side products • Higher yield in shorter time with less space consumption 8 Katsumuto et al. , 2007

The pathway Splitting of Central branching point our pathway 9

From tyrosine to naringenin naringenin producing operon (BBa_K1497007) R R 4-cl cl R tal chs chs R chi chi BBa_K1033001 BBa_K1033000 BBa_K1497000 BBa_K1497001 iGEM Uppsala 2013 10

Naringenin biosensor (1) naringenin FdeR homodimer naringenin bound to FdeR homodimer 11

Naringenin biosensor (2) GFP mKate A: Naringenin biosensor with CFP as reporter (BBa_K1497022) B: Naringenin biosensor with mKate as reporter (BBa_K1497021) GFP and mKate biosensor combined have a broader range! C: Naringenin biosensor without a reporter (BBa_K1497019) D: Naringenin biosensor with GFP as reporter (BBa_K1497020) 12

Quantification of naringenin production 4000 Neg. control 3500 Relative Fluorescence Units (RFU) 3000 T7 naringenin operon (BBa_K1497017) 2500 Const. naringenin operon (BBa_K1497016) 2000 1500 T7 operon: ≈ 3 µM 1000 Const. operon: ≈ 1 µM 500 after 16 h of incubation 0 Quick comparison of different constructs! 13

From naringenin to pelargonidin BBa_K1497023 BB R f3h f3h R dfr dfr R ans ans pelargonidin BBa_K1497011 BBa_K1497009 BBa_K1497010 pelargonidin extracted with dichloromethane No glycosylation -> extraction with organic solvents possible! 14

Metabolic channeling F3H DFR ANS pelargonidin naringenin PDZ SH3 GBD protein scaffold by iGEM Team SJTU-BioX-Shanghai 2012 15

Modularization See SCUT 2014 for S. cerevisiae Construction of scaffold variations by Bgl II Brick cloning strategy 16

Dry lab to wet lab Modeling lead to shortened anthocyanidin synthase (eANS, BBa_K1497002) • Elastic Network Models • Linear Response Theory • All Atom Molecular Dynamics Elastic Network Model 17

Mission accomplished! • Modularizable Grätzel cell holder • Printed with bio-degradable PLA • First test : ≈ 0.6 mA and 150 mV ! • See the models at our poster 18

Achievements pelargonidin extracted • Characterizing 23 of 33 BioBrick parts with dichloromethane sent to the registry • Construction of a functional pelargonidin pathway in E. coli • Engineering and improving of ANS by in silico protein multi-scale modeling • Introducing three functional naringenin PDZ SH3 GBD biosensors • Introducing an improved protein scaffold • Describing a novel Policy & Practices approach 19

More achievements! Visit our Wiki for: • Our Safety approach • More modeling data • More scaffold improvements • Open Hardware models (3D-printer STL files) • Open Software packages for R • Our full application scenario & techno-moral vignette 20

Acknowledgements Christian Sator Henning Pennekamp The Team Jascha Volk Andreas Schmidt Rico Ballmann Christian Sürder Dr. Melanie Kern Sebastian Barthel Michael Sürder Dr. Stefan Martens Malte Blumenroth Bastian Wagner Alexander Schlauer Thomas Dohmen Alex Wyllie Barbara Wolf Max Dombrowsky Anne Einhäupl Kai Fenzl Advisors Prof. Dr. Michael Grätzel Tobias Gabriel Dr. Toby Meyer Sascha Hein Prof. Dr. Heribert Warzecha Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann Niklas Hummel Sven Jager Wieke Betten Carmen Klein Charlotte Kaspar Kai Kucharzewski Thank you! Benjamin Mayer Prof. Dr. Katja Schmitz Christian Mende Prof. Dr. Kay Hamacher Laurin Monnheimer Prof. Dr. Heinz Koeppl Sebastian Palluk Prof. Dr. Jörg Simon Sven Rumpf Prof. Dr. Adam Bertl Fabian Rohden Prof. Dr. Gerhard Thiel Daniel Sachs PD Dr. Tobias Meckel 21 Renè Sahm Sabine Fräbel