Harnessing the power of bacterial communities for water remediation

The project will explore potential of indigenous bacterial communities from household greywater for pollutant degradation and exploit their innate ability to cope with surrounding pollution for design of an eco-friendly and economically viable filter for greywater remediation. A simple, sustainable, and cost-effective method is needed to replace conventional wastewater treatments that, apart from requiring expensive equipment and complex operations, are often ineffective and lead to secondary water pollution. The project will address this problem by exploiting natural genetic resources and advanced nanomaterials with excellent properties to develop an economically and ecologically viable solution. The project will go beyond the state-of-the-art by combining nanocellulose and polyamide 6 with potent pollutant-degrading bacterial molecules to create innovative filter and achieve high performance in greywater remediation. The specific aims of the project are to: 1. Recruit citizen science effort for sample collection; 2. Establish a unique collection of indigenous bacteria from household greywater; 3. Identify potent bacteria and bacterial communities active against the pollutants; 4. Develop a prototype filter using previously characterized molecules with proven ability to degrade specific pollutants. The project will rely on multidisciplinary strategy that creatively combines natural genetic resources, cutting edge molecular biotechnology and citizen science effort to place on a market a sustainable innovative solution for bioremediation of household greywater and thus contribute to the Clean Environment and Zero Pollution destination of the Horizon Europe programme.