Innovation Anthology #415:
Naphthenic acids are a toxic compound found in oil sands tailings ponds.
Students at the University of Calgary are genetically modifying two organisms to build a biosensor for naphthenic acids.
And they hope to win big with this project at the 2011 International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition in Boston.
Emily Hicks is a 4th year student in biomedical sciences. Her team is using bacteria and microalgae.
EMILY HICKS: It’s a bit of challenge because microalgae is a new organism that we’re working with. And so, in e.coli, if we want to put different DNA sequences into it, we just transform it. It’s easy. Everyone does it. Whereas microalgae it’s a little bit more challenging because we don’t really have all those tools. And then the second stage is that we have to have a reporter, so we need something that will give us some output to tell us that we’ve got the DNA in there. So with e.coli we have tons of reporters that are easy to use. But in microalgae. we’ve had to play around with the ones we get the best reading, because the one we wanted to use actually had really high background levels in the organism just due to the way the organism works.
According to Emily Hicks, if successful, the biosensor will provide an inexpensive probe to test for concentrations of naphthenic acids in oil sands tailings.
Thanks today to Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
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Program Date: 2011-08-09