Difference between revisions of "Team:Waterloo"

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<h2>Welcome to Waterloo iGEM 2019!</h2>
 
<h2>Welcome to Waterloo iGEM 2019!</h2>
<p>Pesticide usage and regulations in Canada have recently come under scrutiny and have caught our attention. Despite playing an important role in protecting crops, pesticides can also negatively impact the immediate rhizosphere of plants by inhibiting the process of root nodule formation. Rhizobacteria are soil bacteria that form beneficial relationships with agriculturally important legume crops. These microorganisms form root nodules and fix nitrogen gas into ammonia, a requirement for plant growth. Farmers using pesticides then need to apply more synthetic nitrogen fertilizers instead of relying on biologically fixed nitrogen. The runoff from these fertilizers can cause major environmental damage in the form of nutrient pollution. Our team therefore aims to minimize the use of ammonia-supplemented fertilizers. To do this, we are engineering rhizobia to have the ability to form root nodules in the presence of pesticides. We will confer resistance by either altering target receptors for the pesticide, or by biologically transforming the pesticide to dampen its toxicity. The aim is to identify the impact these changes will have on root nodule fixation by the engineered rhizobium, with the goal of allowing root nodule formation in the presence of pesticides. Agriculture is a large component of our local community, and providing constructive synthetic biology solutions that support current agricultural practices is fundamental to the inspiration of this year’s project. This project hopes to allow farmers to reduce their use of harmful fertilizers while still using pesticides to ensure high crop yields.</p>
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<p>Despite playing an important role in protecting crops, herbicides can negatively impact the rhizosphere by interfering with root nodule formation. Rhizobia are soil bacteria that form beneficial relationships with agriculturally important legumes. These microorganisms form root nodules and fix nitrogen gas into ammonia, which plants need to grow. Farmers using herbicides that interfere with biological nitrogen fixation need to apply more nitrogen fertilizers. The runoff from these fertilizers causes nutrient pollution. Therefore, we aim to minimize the use of nitrogen fertilizers. To do this, we are engineering Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens USDA110 to have the ability to form root nodules with soybeans in the presence of the herbicide linuron. We hope to confer herbicide tolerance by giving B. diazoefficiens the ability to biologically transform the herbicide and dampen its toxicity. Agriculture is a large component of our community. This project hopes to provide constructive synthetic biology solutions that support current agricultural practices.</p>
 
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Revision as of 20:21, 20 October 2019

Waterloo iGEM 2019

Welcome to Waterloo iGEM 2019!

Despite playing an important role in protecting crops, herbicides can negatively impact the rhizosphere by interfering with root nodule formation. Rhizobia are soil bacteria that form beneficial relationships with agriculturally important legumes. These microorganisms form root nodules and fix nitrogen gas into ammonia, which plants need to grow. Farmers using herbicides that interfere with biological nitrogen fixation need to apply more nitrogen fertilizers. The runoff from these fertilizers causes nutrient pollution. Therefore, we aim to minimize the use of nitrogen fertilizers. To do this, we are engineering Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens USDA110 to have the ability to form root nodules with soybeans in the presence of the herbicide linuron. We hope to confer herbicide tolerance by giving B. diazoefficiens the ability to biologically transform the herbicide and dampen its toxicity. Agriculture is a large component of our community. This project hopes to provide constructive synthetic biology solutions that support current agricultural practices.

Demonstrate

How did our project fare in the implementation stage?

Attributions

To all the lovely people who helped!

Collaborations

Team work makes the dream work!

Human Practices

Communication, education, and regulation!

Model

We love differential equations!

Results

Keeping our data in check!

Parts

What's a good pun about plasmids?

Improve

Science is about incremental improvements!

Experiments

What's a good pun about plasmids?