Synthetic Biology applications to Water Supply and Remediation

我们建议利用科学领域中发展最快的前沿之一——合成生物学，来解决最紧迫的工程问题之一——淡水的供应和修复，以便将创新技术推向迅速扩大的国际市场。合成生物学是一项令人兴奋的、具有潜在变革性的科学努力，其应用显然是无限的。这项基础技术目前正在英国各地的实验室开发，具有重大的学术影响。该领域的前沿领域正在迅速向后推进，现在将其扩展到现实世界的应用中，这是一个重大的挑战和机遇。在这方面，供水和处理技术的设计是一个迫切需要合成生物学所承诺的创新的领域。在发达国家，工业革命的工程师们给我们留下了宏伟的水利基础设施。但现在它老旧、有缺陷、维护成本高、运行成本高、能源消耗大，因此是不可持续的。我们将创新合成生物学的基础技术，以改进现有的和创造新的供水和处理生物技术，重点关注两个一般主题，即：作为哨兵和信号的合成生物和作为催化剂的合成生物。环境工程小组目前正在开发的饮用水系统、膜过滤技术、厌氧消化、微生物燃料电池和生物电化学系统等从芯片到实验室到中试规模的水工程技术，将为测试新想法提供强大的环境。我们将使用合成生物作为哨兵和信号发生器来设计生物膜的形成和溶解，并优化废水厌氧处理中有价值产品的回收。我们将开发最小的细胞结构作为解毒水的催化剂。我们将量化开放微生物群落中合成生物种群的动态，并探索合成生物学的负责任创新和新兴技术的治理。

We propose to harness one of the most rapidly evolving frontiers in science, synthetic biology, to tackle one of the most pressing engineering problems, the supply and remediation of fresh water, in order to deliver innovative technologies into a rapidly expanding international market.Synthetic biology is an exciting and potentially transformative scientific endeavour with apparently limitless applications. This basic technology is now being developed in laboratories across the UK, with significant academic impact . The frontiers of the field are being pushed back rapidly and scaling up to real-world applications now presents a significant challenge and opportunity. In this respect, the design of technology for water supply and treatment is an area that urgently requires the innovation that synthetic biology promises. In the Developed World, the engineers of the industrial revolution bequeathed us magnificent water infrastructure. But it is now aged, faulty, expensive to maintain, costly to run, energy guzzling and, consequently, unsustainable. We will innovate in the basic-technology of synthetic biology to improve existing and create new biotechnologies for water supply and treatment focussing on two generic themes, namely: synthetic organisms as sentinels and signallers, and synthetic organisms as catalysts.The chip-to-lab-to-pilot scale water engineering technologies in drinking water systems, membrane filtration technologies, anaerobic digestion, microbial fuel cells and bioelectrochemical systems currently being developed in the Environmental Engineering group will provide robust environments to test new ideas. We will use synthetic organisms as sentinels and signallers to engineer the formation and dissolution of biofilms and to optimise the recovery of valuable products in the anaerobic treatment of wastewater. We will develop minimal cell architectures as catalysts in detoxifying water. We will quantify the dynamics of populations of synthetic organisms in open microbial communities and explore responsible innovation in synthetic biology and governance of the emerging technologies.