ExeterUniIGEM

We want our bacteria to produce perchlorate reductase (which makes perchlorate into chlorite) and chlorite dismutase (which makes chloride and oxygen). There are actually bacteria that produce these enzymes in nature, but we're hoping that E. coli will produce more enzyme because it generally grows faster. It also allows us to mix and match DNA coding sequences (so we can produce the perchlorate reductase from one bacterium species and the chlorite dismutase from another) from different bacteria to see what would be faster.

So it's definitely possible!

Thanks for having such faith in our project!

Might be more useful to label oxygen produced by our bioreactor as GMO, because I'm not sure all oxygen on Earth would meeet organic standards. Is it organic if it's produced by plants that aren't grown organically?

Edit: on to in

We just wanted a day or so for people to think about questions! And btw, we are both ladies :)

The bacteria don't do anything with the chlorine actually. Perchlorate exists as salts (eg. MgCl4) and the chloride will react with the ions present in the water from these salts.

As for the oxygen, we're more concerned that the bacteria might use the oxygen for itself instead of releasing it into the solution. We're currently working on an experiment that hopefully shows that they release it though!

Essentially, we're using enzymes produced by a few specialised bacteria to break down perchlorates. The first enzyme is perchlorate reductase, which catalyses the reaction below

ClO4 + 2AH2 -> ClO2 + 2A + 2H2O

(Here, A could be a variety of different chemicals found in the cell, usually some sort of quinone)

Then, chlorite dismustase will catalyse

ClO2 -> O2 + Cl-

This is the chemical pathway we would hope to use in making oxgyen from Martian perchlorates.