fairfolio
Saved Projects

Engineering Pseudomonas putida KT2440 for Biodegradation of Ethylene Glycol

CSEF · 2019 Microbiology (General)

Jillian M. Labador · Roosevelt (Eleanor) High School, Eastvale, Riverside County

Overview

Objectives Maximize consumption of ethylene glycol by engineering a bacteria Pseudomonas putida (P. putida) KT2440. Methods Designed a plasmid with the genes involved in converting ethylene glycol into biomass and transformed P. putida. Measured the optical density (OD) of the engineered bacteria in various concentrations of ethylene glycol, and will measure the concentration of ethylene glycol before and after its presence with the engineered bacteria using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Results There was significantly more growth of the wildtype P. putida in ethylene glycol than of the engineered P. putida, and there was insignificantly more growth of the P. putida with the control plasmid (backbone with no genomic insert) than with the expression plasmid. An effective HPLC protocol for ethylene glycol is being devised. Conclusions The toxicity assays of ethylene glycol on P. putida with the expression plasmid and with the control plasmid demonstrated no statistical difference in the optical density of the bacteria. The genes that were inserted into the backbone plasmid might not be effective in facilitating the growth of P. putida in ethylene glycol, which is a significant factor in maximizing the consumption of ethylene glycol.

Summary statement

I designed a plasmid to maximize the consumption of ethylene glycol in the bacteria Pseudomonas putida KT2440.

Help received

I did my research, developed my research question and hypothesis, and organized the data independently at home. I conducted the experiments at the University of California Riverside in Dr. Wheeldon's lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering under the supervision and guidance of a graduate student who

Competition history

  • CSEF 2019 Microbiology (General) · Entry S1516

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google