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a map indicating position of greater bay area

The sea around China has been suffering from acidification

a factory with smokes coming out, raining and dead fish in the river. Indicating factory emission cause acidic rain and lead to death of water creatures

It's the result of large emission of CO₂...

Ocean and freshwater acidification could cause many problems...

Ca²⁺ deficiency

smokes coming out from chimmy indicating pollution

Ability to store pollutants (future carbon emissions)

Weak or brittle shell

Our project, AcidOceanus, aim to tackle the problem by engineering an inward H⁺ pump to E. coli

XeR gene is introduced into E. coli to produce inward proton pump

A bacterium receives sunlight and has a pump that move proton into the bacterium

light is required to undergo conformation change for the inward transport. We also introduced promoter Pasr to allow expression only under acid environment.

a circular system showing how to implement the project. The cycle consists of dark parts and bright parts. The bacteria circulate inside. In bright parts, the bacteria receives light and pump proton into themselves. In the dark part, the bacteria release proton into the water. The resulting acidic water is moved to somewhere else.

With partial Lighting on circular device, we could remove proton from target water source

With a healthier water and ocean environment, we could gain diverse and thriving marine and freshwater population