From 2007.igem.org

Current Ideas of Possible Projects

Contents 1 Synthesis 2 Bioredimiation 2.1 Detection of Contaminants 2.2 Removal of Contaminants 2.3 Safety Issues

Synthesis

Synthesis of chemotherapy drugs that are hard to produce in nature

• Taxol
  • an anticancer drug, which is extracted from the pacific yew tree or semisynthesised from european yew needle extracts, at a cost of $6000 per treatment.
• cyclosporin
• rapamycin

Bioredimiation

Detection of Contaminants

Removal of Contaminants

Imobalising Heavy metals so they cant enter water table

Plants

Safety Issues

We cant just release genetically manipulated organisms into the wild to help clean up the environment for a number of reasons. Possible things to consider:

Danger of mutation and effecting environment in adverse ways

Looking at Deinococcus radiodurans with multipe genomes to see if the resistance to rasiation

Danger of continuing to live after the job is done

One of the main problems with releasing GM organisms into the environment is their ability to persist and interbreed with non GM organisms of the same species. One idea was to generate E. coli which could only divide for a certain number of generations before dying, removing its self from the ecosystem.

This system must be fail safe