Synthetic Biology applications to Water Supply and Remediation

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.

The water industry in the UK rivals the healthcare, energy, and telecommunications sectors in terms of direct access to the population and its impact on the public health and wellbeing. It is a testament to the success of 20th century water engineers that more than 95% of the UK population is connected to 1700 drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) and 9000 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) by more than 700,000 km's of pipes and sewers. But 3-5% of electricity used for water supply and treatment emitting more than 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases and £120 billion was spent over the last 20 years to merely maintain and iteratively improve the existing unsustainable infrastructure. The industry desperately needs to move towards cheaper, more sustainable, low-energy technologies.

From source to sink water is teeming with life, consequently the greatest challenges in the engineered water cycle revolve around managing microorganisms; we try to kill them in water treatment processes, they clog filters, corrode water supply pipes, we nurture them in wastewater treatment plants to convert waste into something less harmful. Synthetic biology offers us the potential to control some of the key processes in a way that we have never been able to do in the past. In this Frontier Engineering award we will make the first concerted effort to take promising synthetic biology breakthroughs and advance them towards viable technologies in water engineering. If we can use synthetic organisms to tell us how to control the formation of biofilms we could reduce pumping costs or prevent corrosion. If we can engineer organisms to make useful products from wastewater we could change the economics of wastewater treatment. If we can make minimal cell architectures to detoxify water then we could devise new water purification systems. We will explore all of these along with the risk, uncertainty and governance of synthetic biology applications to water supply, treatment and remediation. Our structured and less formal connections with key-players in the water supply chain will provide us with expert feedback on our research programme and the routes to deliver these impacts in this strategically important industry.