Gaia

Curitiba | Warning: Things are heating up!

GAIA

High-Level Project Summary

With the intensification of global warming and its serious damage, the GAIA was designed with the objective of increasing CO2 fixation and O2 production during photosynthesis through synthetic biology. In the presence of light and the ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate substrate, a synthetic circuit applied to cyanobacteria, will induce overexpression of RuBisCO, Ribulose activase and RuBisCO Assembly Factor 1, improving enzyme activity. Integrated with a dashboard, GAIA will monitor the cyanobacteria and the region where they were inserted to keep them in the right conditions, allowing the optimization of their photosynthesis and making room for an improvement in the condition of our atmosphere.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://vimeo.com/622020909

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GU3MpjnpebFSsMFEfrQjxOSov7zWwzFf/view?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

In recent years, we have seen and witnessed many news related to the increasing rates of global warming resulting from the emission of greenhouse gases. Combining these facts with deforestation, burning, periods of drought, natural disasters and/or caused by the human being, we realize that our planet is experiencing a huge environmental crisis, especially if we think that no matter how much laws are imposed, illegal activities continue to take place in various places around the world. Because of this, we created GAIA, an invisible forest, in which we apply synthetic biology (1) to cyanobacteria in order to improve carbon absorption and oxygen production, idealizing a "superphotosynthesis". These organisms will be stored in a bioreactor (2), which will be inspected via control panel (3), monitoring the internal conditions of our device in order to keep cyanobacteria in an ideal state. To do this, we will use a dashboard (4) that will receive bioreactor monitoring data, and in partnership with data from space agencies, will present information about the region, before and after GAIA implantation, as well as its future perspective.


(1) Synthetic Biology

Synthetic circuits allow the manipulation of biological processes by modulating genetic expression. In this project, logical doors were developed whose input signals, characterized by light uptake and Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate substrate (RuBP), culminating in the improvement of RuBisCO enzyme activation. The projected circuit consists of the RuBisCO coding genes (RBCS and RBCL), ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase activase (RCA), and RuBisCO assembly factor 1 (RAF1). Inserted in cyanobacteria, the circuit containing the three genetic sequences will allow the induction of overexpression in the presence of signals.


(2) Bioreactor

To ensure the best possible performance of enzymes and other components, a bioreactor is designed to keep cyanobacteria as synthetic, in which engineered organisms are stored under specific solution and the maintenance of optimal operating conditions occurs, such as, control of high temperature, availability of RuBP substrate and viability of solar ray capture. The bioreactor consists of a sealed acrylic box, with only two orifices for the inlet and outing of air, designed to preserve cyanobacteria and prevent the entry of unwanted organisms.


(3) Control Panel

Linked to the Bioreactor, the control panel has the functionality of measuring water temperature, PH and keeping water always warm, between 32 and 36 degrees Celsius (89.6 and 96.8 Fahrenheit), so that cyanobacteria remain in an ideal operating condition, in addition to sending all the information to the database connected to Dashboard, in order to control at a distance via IOT. 

To this end, the panel has a microcontroller, acting as the brain of the operation (for this project, we used the Arduino UNO), a WIFI module, to send the collected information to Dashboard (ESP8266), a touchscreen for local monitoring (Display LCD 1.8 TFT), a PH sensor (PH4502C), a water temperature sensor (DS18B20) and a heating tube. To ensure airflow, without compromising the life of cyanobacteria, the bioreactor also has two coolers, one for intake and one for exhaust, both connected in separate tubes, protected by a thermal blanket and a dust filter.


(4) Dahsboard

GAIA's software is based on a dashboard that will use open data from space agencies, such as drought indexes, climate change, NASA, gas emission levels, collected by the Canadian Space Agency, carbon emission information, and other gases, acquired via Meteomatics API, seeking to identify places with greenhouse gas emission indexes harmful to the atmosphere. After this first phase, areas for the implementation of the Bioreactor will be suggested in order to improve the conditions of the region. When implemented, the system will monitor the device, identifying the ideal levels established for the correct functioning of cyanobacteria, as well as the region, seeking to identify the changes that will occur in the highlighted location. And finally, it will seek to identify possible changes for the future, warning how long the region will have better air quality or if something can interfere and regress the process.

We will use new technologies with many opportunities for updates and expansions for the development of our dashboard. We want it to be scalable to receive and treat more data overtime. To do this, we will use the following technologies: Python, ReactJS, TypeScript, and JavaScript for development, in addition to using PostgreSQL, to create a relational database structure, MongoDB, to assist us in non-relational structures and the Redis, to make up the structuring of our base. We will also rely on the aid of APIs for data collection, mainly related to climate change, gas emissions, and global warming, thus providing filtered and useful information for GAIA.

Space Agency Data

Among the material provided by NASA and other space agencies, we have used various data and news pertinent to our theme and consequently to our project. Information contained in: Giss Impacts / Giss Research were extremely important to gather information about certain areas and their climate change influencing greenhouse gas emissions. We also track the drought monitoring: Drought Monitor 1 / Drought Monitor 2, to identify regions with a lack of humidity and rain, more likely to receive environmental damage. We collected some data, with relevant information about the gases present in our atmosphere, to use in our project, present in the Canadian Space Agency (CSA): CloudSat / Osiris / Mopitt / SCISAT. As well as the data collected from the European Sentinel missions: Sentinel and the climate data present in its satellites and analyses: Climate Data Dashboard. And finally, we use the feature provided through the Meteomatics API to collect data regarding the gases present in our atmosphere: Meteomatics .

Hackathon Journey

Our participation in this 10-year special edition of SpaceApps Challenge was marked by great learning on several different areas. Fortunately, we were able to assemble our team with a diversity of areas, providing a very interesting exchange of knowledge. We participated in the challenge: Warning: Things are heating up!, because we had an amazing idea and we were able to persist with it to the end and create our project, just needing a few adjustments to encompass the challenge in a complete way. We are very motivated to create a solution to a problem of such great impact and complexity. We were able to unite synthetic biology, an area that becomes even more revolutionary with the areas of IOT, dealing with electronic circuits and data analysis, transforming them into information useful to our entire project, thus creating a prototype that maximises carbon capture and produces more oxygen. We appreciate the dedication of our entire team and all the employees who participated in the event!

Houston we have the solution!

References

We use several researches in our project, so that we can base our fundamentals and ideas. We use articles "Co-overproducing Rubisco and Rubisco activase enhances photosynthesis in the optimal temperature range in rice" and "Overexpression of Rubisco subunits with RAF1 increases Rubisco content in maize" to better understand the entire biological part of GAIA, and understand the entire functioning of the processes involved. We also access data and news provided by NASA, CSA, EESA and JAXA space agencies, as well as the Meteomatics API to verify the levels of gases present in our atmosphere and how it interferes negatively or positively in our environment. In order to support our ideation, we have researched various news about carbon emissions, greenhouse effect and global warming, even to raise significant index for the development of the project and the search for the best solution to the great problem of warming of our planet.

For the development of our dashboard, we will use Python, ReactJS, TypeScript and JavaScript as tools for creating the front-end and back-end of the application, as for our database, we chose the relational database PostgreSQL, the non-relational bank MongoDB and Redis. In the X control panel (aquarium), we will use the IOT for constant monitoring of water temperature and ph in order to keep cyanobacteria in the ideal conditions.

Links:


Tags

#synbio, #hardware, #dashboard, #syntethicBiology, #biology, #climateChange, #globalWarming, #greenhouseEffect #Gaia

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.

Warning: Things are heating up!

Climate change is expected to exacerbate heat-related extremes that impact human health and environmental and ecological systems. Your challenge is to build a tool that uses Earth Observations (EO), crowdsourced data, and models to provide warnings about potential impacts of these events, along with guidance on mitigation measures.