Difference between revisions of "Team:Waterloo/Description"

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<h3>★  ALERT! </h3>
 
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<p>This page is used by the judges to evaluate your team for the <a href="https://2019.igem.org/Judging/Medals">medal criterion</a> or <a href="https://2019.igem.org/Judging/Awards"> award listed below</a>. </p>
 
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<p> Delete this box in order to be evaluated for this medal criterion and/or award. See more information at <a href="https://2019.igem.org/Judging/Pages_for_Awards"> Instructions for Pages for awards</a>.</p>
 
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<h1>Project Inspiration and Description </h1>
 
<h1>Project Inspiration and Description </h1>
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<h3>NEW: Bronze Medal Criterion #4</h3>
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<h3>Bronze Medal Criterion #4</h3>
  
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<p>Document how and why you chose your iGEM project on this page. Reference work outside or inside of iGEM that inspired your project, how you selected your project goal, and why you thought this project was a useful application of synthetic biology. Finally, provide a clear and concise description of what you plan on doing for your project.</p>
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<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>
  
 
<p>To be eligible for this award, you must add clear documentation to this page and delete the alert box at the top of this page.</p>
 
<p>To be eligible for this award, you must add clear documentation to this page and delete the alert box at the top of this page.</p>

Revision as of 22:33, 27 June 2019

Project Inspiration and Description

Bronze Medal Criterion #4

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.

To be eligible for this award, you must add clear documentation to this page and delete the alert box at the top of this page.

What should this page contain?

  • A clear and concise description of your project.
  • A detailed explanation of why your team chose to work on this particular project.
  • References and sources to document your research.
  • Use illustrations and other visual resources to explain your project.

Inspiration

See how other teams have described and presented their projects:

Advice on writing your Project Description

We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be concise, accurate, and unambiguous in your achievements.

References

iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you thought about your project and what works inspired you.