Our team is located in San Diego, California, so the beach and coastline are an important part of our lives. As a result, we understand the major impact that marine life has on not only the oceans, but also the communities surrounding them. Since San Diego has consistently sunny weather, many beach-goers apply sunscreen when they visit the beach. When looking at sunscreen bottles, our team found that many sunscreens that people use contain oxybenzone, a chemical that is toxic to coral reefs and other marine life. When researching, we found that oxybenzone concentrations as low as 0.14 mg per liter of seawater can kill 50% of coral larvae in less than 24 hours [1], which can be extremely detrimental to the reproduction of corals and coral reefs in general. In addition, according to a 2017 report by the US Food and Drug Administration [2], about 11% of sunscreens contain oxybenzone, a UVA and UVB blocker, meaning that many of the sunscreens used by beachgoers could cause oxybenzone pollution. Our team wanted to solve this problem, so that we can leave a lasting impact on our community, by spreading awareness about oxybenzone pollution to the public, and save the corals. Knowing we wanted to create a project revolving around oxybenzone, we came across the idea of detecting its concentrations in water when looking through previous iGEM projects. In 2020, Team St_Andrews created a project called Shinescreen in which they made a coral-safe, sustainable, and probiotic sunscreen. We thought this was a great idea, but we wanted to address the oxybenzone-based sunscreens that people were using now, and its impact on the environment. Our team decided to further their research, focusing instead on the detection of oxybenzone in water. Due to the high rate of oxybenzone in sunscreens and the detrimental effects on marine life from the chemical, we decided to focus on the detection of oxybenzone in our project, as well as spreading awareness so people in our community will be informed about the harmful effects of oxybenzone on the environment.
Our proposed detection method for oxybenzone will be able to detect oxybenzone at the location of the experiment, allowing scientists to gather results in a more timely manner. Currently, there are no viable in situ methods for oxybenzone detection in ocean waters, which prolongs experimentation as scientists must transport test water to a lab to perform laboratory experiments. For the device itself, we are designing a BioBrick that would detect oxybenzone via estrogen receptors. To be able to do this, we would need to design the detection system with E. coli bacteria, which we chose due to its ability for easy manipulation [3]. In order to build our BioBrick for successful oxybenzone detection, we would transfect the estrogen receptor into our pCAG-GFP plasmid vector using DNA recombinant technology [4]. We chose this plasmid because it is the most commonly used to express a green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP is our marker protein of choice because when the GFP gene is connected to the gene producing the protein of focus, the fluorescence indicates the presence of that protein. The estrogen receptor is a eukaryotic gene that we would express by placing a plasmid designed for eukaryotes into the E. coli in order to properly express the gene. Regions of our plasmid would include the estrogen receptor sequence and a promoter sequence. T7 Promoter is a sequence of 18 DNA base pairs that are recognized by T7 RNA polymerase and can initiate the translation of the plasmid [5]. We would insert the T7 Promoter to initiate transcription. In our proposed experimentation, a signal transduction cascade from the estrogen receptor will occur to produce GFP [6]. Under observation with fluorescence microscopy, the E. coli bacteria will fluoresce. The light intensity will correlate with the concentration of oxybenzone in the water. Thus, with the ability to perform all the aforementioned steps at the site of the experiment, scientists will be able to collect faster results and be able to immediately detect oxybenzone on site.
The main goal of our project is to design a microbial oxybenzone sensor that can be used in situ by researchers conveniently and rapidly. We noticed that there weren't any easily accessible sensors for scientists to use which is why we decided to focus our project mainly on the detection of oxybenzone.
When we surveyed people, we realized that not many people knew about the oxybenzone and its harmful effects on the environment. Through our social media platforms, we have made it our goal to increase awareness of oxybenzone in the general community.
We believe it is extremely important to educate, inspire, and enable young students in the field of biology. We conducted a 5-day intro to biology and synthetic biology summer camp for 4th-8th graders to hopefully spark their interest in the area.
The COVID-19 pandemic of the last three years has greatly impacted people all around the world, and has also required iGEM teams to adapt to these new circumstances. While the last two years of the competition have been virtual, we were glad to hear that we would be able to attend in-person this year. We’re excited to meet fellow iGEM teams in person and have the opportunity to witness teams from all over the world share their amazing projects.
However, we are still facing challenges from the impact of COVID-19, particularly in our research and lab component. While we were hoping to work in a lab this year, tight restrictions prevented us from creating a prototype and testing our project’s device. After further unsuccessful searching, we realized that we wouldn’t be able to work in a lab and instead developed a theoretical project. We have had experience over the past two years doing just that and decided to continue using the resources and knowledge that we had gained.
One aspect that has improved over the past two years is our ability for outreach through Human Practices and Science Communication. While we had to work virtually in the past, we were actually able to hold in-person events this year, such as our synthetic biology camp, joint ethics symposium, and in-person interviews. In addition, we continued to utilize social media to spread awareness about our project through infographics and surveys, which is something that we’re now experienced in. Overall, we were able to combine a virtual and in-person design for our outreach goals, and were able to learn a lot about adapting to challenges and approaching problems.
We’re so grateful that we had the opportunity for our team to meet in-person, to meet members of our community, and work together with other teams to create a project that we strongly believe in.
[1] Corals and sea anemones turn sunscreen into toxins – understanding how could help save coral reefs. Down To Earth. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/pollution/corals-and-sea-anemones-turn-sunscreen-into-toxins-understanding-how-could-help-save-coral-reefs-82756
[2] Boerner, L. K. (2022). Sunscreen chemical kills corals—now scientists know why. Cen.acs.org. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/Sunscreen-chemical-kills-corals-scientists/100/web/2022/05
[3] Nature Publishing Group. (n.d.). E. Coli and Chassis. Nature news. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/bio2.0/e_coli_and_chassis/.
[4] PCAG-GFP (plasmid #11150). Addgene. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.addgene.org/11150/
[5] T7 Promoter System. T7 promoter system. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/technical-documents/technical-article/genomics/cloning-and-expression/t7-promoter-system
[6] The Embryo Project Encyclopedia. | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/green-fluorescent-protein.