Fwd: iGEM project! Save the world from mercury poisoning :) this is a goooood idea!!

[Mackenzie Cowell]

Hey guys,

Awesome project idea from my sister summarized it below.  She learned about recent work on enzymatic methyl mercury breakdown in her public health studies.  The basic idea is to engineer a microbe that lives inside fish or human hosts to break down ingested methyl mercury.

What are your thoughts?

Mac

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Whitney Cowell <wjco...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 12:53 AM
Subject: iGEM project! Save the world from mercury poisoning :) this is a goooood idea!!
To: Mackenzie Cowell <maco...@gmail.com>


Remember on the plane I was showing you this article, here is the basics "new discovery of the detailed mechanism of a specific enzyme found in bacteria, called MerB, that breaks down methylmercury.  The team constructed a computational model of the enzyme's active site and used density functional theory calculations to simulate the demethylation reaction.  They found the enzyme binds to methylmercury and rearranges electrons in the compound, priming it for breakdown. The researchers hope their findings will one day be applied to ecosystem-wide remediation efforts.  In 2008, 27 states issued statewide advisories for mercury in freshwater bodies."

So maybe the project would be to somehow get this enzyme into fish or into the water... actually i think it would have to be in fish, or maybe in humans, because methymercury (the most harmful kind to humans due to its ability to bioaccumulate) forms when microorganisms combine elemental mercury released from coal plants with carbon molecules.  So technically I don't think its formed when its just free floating in the water.  I've attached the actual journal article about the study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Anyway, this would be cool.  I would help. 

Whit

--
Whitney J. Cowell, B.S.
University of Michigan
Boston University School of Public Health
MPH Candidate
Department of Environmental Health
wjco...@bu.edu
231.313.9061

--
Mac Cowell / @100ideas / +1.231.313.9062 / has100ideas.com /  DIYbio.org

[Russell Hanson]

Hi Guys,

I don't really see why a density functional calculation would be useful,
in the slightest, to engineering a specific enzyme into different
organisms that can use it to break down mercury. The mechanism is
mostly of academic interest, when the gene/protein is already known and
engineering it into a bacterium is quite a different task. Unless
someone has some specific interest in the energetics of this reaction
and how DFT techniques function in this case.

The structure of MerB is here:
http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=3f0o

Another neat protein that was recently discovered has to do with a
silicon transport:
"A silicon transporter in rice" by Jian Feng Ma et al.
http://my.lsu.edu/sandru1/articles/ARTI23.pdf

Russell

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Russell W. Hanson
http://russellhanson.com
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