Project Abstract

Abstract:

The goal of this project is to potentially improve the environment by reducing the amount of feather by-products being wasted. Feathers contain keratin that is insoluble and is not being decomposed in a successful manner. Instead of trying to dispose of the feathers, we have found a way to reuse it to benefit the ecosystem in a myriad of ways. By using bacillus, we can efficiently break down the protein and use it agriculturally. We want to be able to help the environment for a better living experience for each individual and to be able to wake up in the morning to a cleaner and healthier mother earth.

Feathers contain a protein called keratin which is insoluble due to its chemical bonds and is difficult to decompose. Instead of disposing the feathers, we have found a way to reuse them to benefit the ecosystem in multiple ways. By using Bacillus and its keratinase we can efficiently break down the protein to use it agriculturally. The problem we wanted to solve is to successfully reuse feathers in a way that will help benefit the ecosystem. The goal of our project is to improve the environment by reducing the amount of feather waste and turning it into useful product. The soil ecosystem is specific to the region and that's why we collected and isolated bacterial strains explicitly from Houston, Texas and tested their ability to digest keratin.

We obtained feathers then turned them into keratin and added that into agar. Afterwards we tested the agar with different bacillus strains to determine which ones were the best at digesting keratin and could be used for agricultural purposes.

We tested 65 species of bacillus and discovered that most strains had some keratinase activity, and we identified the most effective ones. The strains that were the most effective were Bacillus siamensis, Bacillus methylotrophicus, and Bacillus subtilis. They had a 1.5, 1.5 and 1.25 solubilization index respectively. These specific strains were able to turn the surrounding opaque agar clear by digesting the keratin in the agar.

We were successful at finding the most useful bacillus that can digest keratin and turn it to amino acids or peptides. We can use this bacteria to create agricultural products such as animal feed, fertilizer and probiotics which can benefit anything from plants to humans.