Students take first place at MIT energy competition

The University of Alberta ButaNerds have taken first prize in the energy category at an international genetic engineering competition at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

The U of A team is using E. coli bacteria to produce butanol, a biofuel that could one day replace gasoline. Butanol also cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions and takes food crops out of the equation in the development of biofuels.

Teams from 59 universities from around the world took part in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which invites researchers from all over the world to address the question: Can simple biological systems be built from standard, interchangeable parts and operated in living cells?

The U of A squad, composed of eight undergraduate and two graduate students from seven different departments, beat out teams from institutes like the University of California Berkeley and Virginia Tech.

The students spent the summer building a new kind of bacteria - one that might hold some answers to the planet's diminishing supply of fossil fuels. The team took genetic parts from a butanol-producing organism called colestridium acetylbutylicum, and inserted it into E. coli bacteria to produce butanol more efficiently.

"Colestridium produced butanol, but not very efficiently," said team member Justin Pahara, who is a graduate student in cell biology. He added that the team hopes to insert the genetically engineered butanol-producing pathway into a photosensitive bacterium that doesn't require food crops to produce fuel.

The team has successfully tested the fuel in a quad and other engines.

The team is truly interdisciplinary, coming from biosciences, mechanical and electrical engineering, immunology, pharmacology, biochemistry and physics.

Pahara said being a part of the team was a unique learning experience.

"It's really nice to have an opportunity like this," he said. "It is so different, to have a group of 10 students from different departments. It was just crazy. It was a really interdisciplinary project I would have never imagined being a part of. There are lots of undergraduates on this team and I think this will definitely influence their career paths."

He said the team is already gearing up for next year.

"Next year will be better. We had to do tons of fundraising this year and now we have our supporters and we can just get right to the project next year. We're going to keep doing the biofuel project and maybe one or two in the biomedical round."

Andrew Hessel, with Alberta Ingenuity, helped guide the U of A team as well as teams from the universities of Lethbridge and Calgary. The ButaNerds, he says, performed exceptionally.