Microplastics
Fibres, fragments and beads that pass through coarse screens and accumulate through the food web.
Biomimetic synthetic biology
Living filtration
Living filtration
for polluted
estuaries.
A biomimetic synthetic-biology platform inspired by oyster reefs, designed to capture microplastics, bind heavy metals, recover nutrients and regenerate urban waterways.
- 4Pollutant classes sorted
- 7Contained module types
- 0Engineered cells released
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01 — The problem
Estuaries are overloaded with pollutants that biology already knows how to sort.
Urban waterways carry a tangled load: nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, dissolved heavy metals, microplastic fibres and fragments, and bacterial contamination. Conventional treatment can capture much of this, yet it rarely separates the streams or turns them into anything useful.
Oyster reefs solve a version of this every day. They couple particle filtration, biodeposition and microbial nutrient cycling into one living surface. M.OYSTER takes that biological logic and rebuilds it as contained engineered infrastructure.
Heavy metals
Dissolved Pb, Cd, Cu, Hg, Zn and Cr that persist and concentrate in sediment and tissue.
Nitrogen + phosphorus
Excess nutrients that drive algal blooms, hypoxia and the collapse of estuarine oxygen.
Pathogens + biofilms
Bacterial loads and opportunistic biofilms that degrade water quality and habitat.
02 — Model organism
Model organism:
Model organism:
the oyster reef.
A single oyster filters tens of litres of water a day. A reef turns that individual behaviour into a self-building ecosystem. Each step in its process maps onto an engineering function we can contain and control.
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1
Water enters
Tidal flow draws turbid water across the reef surface.
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2
Gills + mucus capture
Cilia and mucus trap suspended particles and bacteria.
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3
Labial palps sort
Material is graded by size and quality before ingestion.
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4
Pseudofeces form
Rejected particles are bound and deposited, not dispersed.
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5
Microbes transform
Sediment communities cycle nitrogen and phosphorus.
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6
Reef builds habitat
Shell accretion creates structure for new life.
03 — System architecture
A synthetic gill–mucus–sediment interface.
Seven contained modules, arranged in sequence. Water moves through capture, concentration and recovery stages. Every engineered cell stays behind a retaining membrane, and every pollutant exits as a separated, removable stream.
Synthetic gill layer
Electrospun nanofibre membrane and cilia-like flow structures capture particles, bacteria and microplastics.
Living mucus layer
Chitosan–alginate or bacterial-cellulose hydrogel hosts an engineered biofilm matrix for particle binding and pollutant concentration.
Heavy-metal capture cassette
Contained engineered biofilm senses metals and upregulates extracellular binders: metallothionein-like, phytochelatin-like and histidine-rich proteins.
Microplastics capture cassette
Synthetic gill fibres and living hydrogel aggregate microplastics into removable flocs.
Struvite recovery module
Ammonium and phosphate are recovered as magnesium ammonium phosphate crystals.
Sediment-mimic biofilm zone
Contained microbial communities support nitrification and denitrification.
Solid-deposit chamber
Pollutants are routed into separated, removable streams rather than released back into the water column.
Design graph — TuringDB
Trace every claim from pollutant to paper.
The whole design is held as one connected graph in TuringDB: pollutants, mechanisms, materials, engineered parts, cassettes, outputs, streams, risks, sensors and the literature behind each claim. Pick a pollutant and follow it from intake to recovered value, with a live check on whether it can reach the fertiliser.
58 nodes 92 edges 15 node types 16 relationship types
What captures it?
Every material, mechanism and cassette acting on a pollutant, and which engineered parts bind it on which chassis.
Can it reach the fertiliser?
Every contamination path into the struvite product stream, with the separation rules that must hold.
Where does it end up?
The full route from module to output to stream to valorisation endpoint.
What backs the claim?
The papers behind each mechanism and part, the failure modes per module, and the sensor watching each one.
04 — Module deep-dives
Three capture chemistries, three separate streams.
Heavy metals
Living metal-sequestering mucosa.
A contained engineered living material detects Pb, Cd, Cu, Hg, Zn and Cr, produces an extracellular binding matrix, and concentrates metals into harvestable biomass. The metal stream stays isolated from nutrient recovery at every stage.
Microplastics
Plastic-rich pseudofeces.
Electrospun gill fibres and mucus-like hydrogels capture plastic fibres, fragments and beads. An engineered extracellular matrix aggregates fine microplastics into removable flocs ready for downstream upcycling.
Nutrients
Pollution into mineral product.
A pH-buffered, magnesium-rich chamber recovers ammonium and phosphate as struvite, producing a solid nutrient product while keeping metals and microplastics out of the fertiliser stream.
05 — Valorisation
From pollutant to material stream.
Struvite
Recovered crystals as a slow-release fertiliser candidate.
Cu, Ni, Zn
Routed toward electrodeposition or selective precipitation.
Pb, Cd, Hg
Stabilised for specialist recovery and safe handling.
Microplastics
Porous carbon, hard-carbon battery anodes, graphene-like nanomaterials, membranes or fuel and chemical feedstocks.
Organic biomass
Treated separately according to contamination level.
Valorisation only happens after stream separation and contaminant testing.
06 — Safety + containment
Designed for containment, not release.
This is not an open-release system. Engineered cells are held inside replaceable cartridges behind retaining membranes, and the architecture is built to be serviced, monitored and regenerated offline.
- Physical cell-retaining membranes
- Replaceable sealed cartridges
- Separate pollutant streams
- Downstream guard layers
- No environmental release of engineered cells
- Sensor readouts for saturation, pH, flow resistance and breakthrough
- Offline regeneration and servicing
07 — Research roadmap
Roadmap from benchtop to estuary.
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Phase 1
Abiotic gill + mucus prototype
Electrospun membranes and hydrogel layers characterised without living cells.
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Phase 2
Contained living hydrogel cassette
Engineered biofilm integrated and retained behind membranes.
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Phase 3
Capture validation
Heavy-metal and microplastic capture quantified under flow.
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Phase 4
Recovery + separation
Struvite recovery and stream separation demonstrated together.
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Phase 5
Dockside contained pilot
A sealed module tested in real estuarine conditions.
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Phase 6
Modular reef-scale deployment
Arrays of cartridges assembled into reef-scale infrastructure.
08 — The question
Can engineered living materials become ecological infrastructure?
We are building a new class of bio-designed filtration systems that learn from reefs, mucosa and sediment microbiomes.
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