Part 1: Environmental Impact & Resource Efficiency
Our project introduces a sustainable biological alternative to traditional polyamine synthesis, which often relies on toxic reagents and high-energy chemical reactions. By isolating naturally thermotolerant microorganisms from hot springs and applying them in mild aqueous fermentation, we establish a clean and resource-efficient biosynthetic pathway. Operating at elevated temperatures (50–55 °C) provides multiple advantages:
- Lower contamination risks.
- Reduced sterilization frequency.
- Decreased water and energy consumption.
Furthermore, the process has potential for integration with industrial waste-heat recovery, improving overall energy efficiency. In future development, we plan to utilize renewable feedstocks such as agricultural byproducts and plant-derived carbon sources to minimize dependence on petrochemicals.
Challenges and Mitigation Strategies
Large-scale bioprocessing also presents challenges, including nutrient consumption, biomass waste, and aeration energy demand. To mitigate these, we will:
- Establish life-cycle assessment metrics such as PMI and E-factor.
- Optimize fermentation efficiency to increase yield per resource input.
- Promote waste reduction, water reuse, and low-carbon substrate adoption.
Through these measures, each stage of our process will align more closely with green manufacturing and circular bioeconomy principles.
Part 2: Safety Control & Biosafety Management
Biosafety remains a cornerstone of our research philosophy. All experiments were conducted within fully contained laboratory environments, strictly following BSL-1 safety standards. The thermophilic strains employed are naturally occurring and non-pathogenic, collected from environmental samples without genetic modification.
Our team maintains rigorous control throughout the workflow:
- All culture media and residues are autoclaved at 121 °C for 30 minutes.
- Liquid waste is chemically neutralized before discharge.
- Instruments and surfaces are disinfected after each operation.
These practices ensure that no biological material or metabolite escapes into the environment. Regular safety training sessions and internal inspections sustain a culture of accountability and awareness within the lab. Although the risks associated with native microorganisms are minimal, we continue to enhance our risk management, waste traceability, and emergency preparedness, ensuring consistent biosafety performance over time and reinforcing our commitment to responsible research.
Part 4: Partnership & Enduring Network
We firmly believe that addressing complex sustainable development challenges requires joint efforts across disciplines and sectors. Therefore, we have taken the initiative to build a diversified cooperation network to ensure that our projects can have a lasting impact.
Academic & Research Institutions
Institute of Geology, Kanzi Prefecture
Our cooperation with Director Li ensures that our sample collection activities are ecologically and ethically responsible. This cooperation model sets an example for future bioprospecting in other extreme environments and deepens our understanding of the environmental background of the sample's origin.
Beijing University of Chemical Technology & Tsinghua University
Consultation with top experts in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology closely links our basic research with application development. Their guidance helped us to anchor the pain points of industrial applications and ensure the industrial relevance of the project's technical route.
Academic Conferences
Participate in high-level academic conferences (15th China Enzyme Engineering Symposium, National Conference on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, etc.). These experiences are not only opportunities for learning, but also a platform for establishing connections.
Industry Engagement
By participating in the 8th National Chemical Engineering and Biochemical Industry Annual Meeting, we communicated with R & D personnel of many biotechnology companies. We understand their urgent need to reduce the cost of fermentation cooling and prevent bacterial contamination, which directly validates the market value of our development of thermophilic chassis cells. An enzyme company based in South China has expressed its willingness to provide a mid-test platform once we have successfully built the chassis.
Part 5: SDGs Mapping
Fig.1 Support a number of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Our projects directly and indirectly support a number of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the following chart clearly shows the core SDGs of our project's contribution:
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Our core contribution is to promote the innovation of bio-manufacturing technology. The thermophilic microbial cell factory we are developing is an entirely new biomanufacturing platform in its own right. Compared with the traditional normal temperature fermentation, the high temperature fermentation process can significantly reduce energy consumption (reduce cooling demand) and greatly reduce the risk of bacterial contamination, thereby improving the efficiency and robustness of the production process.
Responsible Consumption and Production
We are committed to achieving a more sustainable production model through biological means. The current industrial production of polyamines mainly relies on chemical synthesis, which may involve toxic reagents and harsh reaction conditions. Our technical pathway aims to use microbial cell factories for green biosynthesis to reduce the use and production of harmful substances from the source.
Climate Action
Our project indirectly contributes to addressing climate change through 'energy-saving fermentation'. The cooling system in the biological manufacturing process is one of the main energy consumption units. Our thermophilic chassis cells can be efficiently produced at high temperatures, which can theoretically greatly reduce or even eliminate the dependence on the cooling system, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the entire production process.
Part 6: Long-term Scalability
The design of our project goes beyond the competition cycle, and its inherent characteristics give it great long-term development potential and scalability.
1. The expansion of platform technology:
The thermophilic host strains we isolated and identified and their related genetic tools are the core legacy of our project. After its success, it can be used not only for the production of polyamines, but also as a universal platform for thermophilic synthetic biology.
2. Continuing value of data and biological components:
The data set generated by metagenomics and multi-omics analysis is a treasure trove for understanding the adaptation mechanism and metabolic network of thermophilic microorganisms. These data will continue to serve the basic research of extreme environmental microbiology.
3. The integration potential of circular economy:
Looking forward to the future, our thermophilic platform technology has the potential to be combined with waste recycling. For example, we can explore and transform our strains so that they can use specific components in agricultural waste hydrolysate or industrial wastewater as carbon sources to participate in the upgrading and recycling of waste while producing high-value chemicals.
Conclusion
Through the above strategies, we are confident that the seeds sown by this iGEM project will grow into a towering tree in the future that can continue to contribute value to industrial biotechnology, environmental protection and scientific research.
Part 3: Social & Economic Sustainability
This project exemplifies how scientific exploration can align with social and environmental responsibility. By establishing a low-impact, resource-efficient biomanufacturing framework, we present a sustainable alternative to conventional chemical synthesis.
Thermotolerant Bacillus strains offer inherent advantages:
Making the process feasible for both academic research and industrial scaling. All datasets, methods, and analytical results are shared openly, contributing to a collaborative scientific ecosystem grounded in transparency and reproducibility. This open-access model supports the shift toward a bio-based circular economy that values efficiency and renewability.
Challenges and Commitment
At the same time, we acknowledge remaining challenges:
To address these gaps, we are committed to strengthening outreach, communication, and cross-disciplinary partnerships, ensuring that our approach to sustainable biotechnology can benefit both science and society in the long term.