Team:Guelph/Description

Project Inspiration and Description - the ABC's of iGEM Guelph

Project A: Antibiotic Biosensor

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.

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Project B: Beerstone

Antibiotic resistance is a problem that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage as more and more microbes are being exposed to antibiotics in the environment. Tetracycline is an antibiotic with a wide range of applications such as acne and sexually transmitted disease management as well as a multitude of agricultural applications. Our inspiration stems from the ever-looming threat that we face as a result of antibiotic resistance. The University of Guelph is also heavily invested in agricultural sciences.

As such, we aspire to create a time- and cost-effective diagnostic test for agricultural antibiotic runoff using Escherichia coli to yield a color change in the presence of tetracycline in the field rather than shipping samples to a lab. We chose to use the violacein pathway to produce the color change because this pathway has multiple control points that may be implemented in the future for other variables. The success of this biosensor will ideally be able to be expanded to work with other antibiotics and control mechanisms.

Inspiration

See how other teams have described and presented their projects:

• 2016 Imperial College
• 2016 Wageningen UR
• 2014 UC Davis
• 2014 SYSU Software

Project C: CRISPR in Plants

Global warming is and has been changing weather patterns and natural systems. With changing temperatures, we have seen shifts in growing seasons, crop yield, structure, and health, as well as changes in ecological interactions with crops and their environment. With such uncertainty in both climate and weather, iGEM Guelph has recognized that from a food security and economic perspective there exists a great need to overcome these challenges. As such, we aim to genetically engineer crops to be better able to withstand the stressful conditions created by climate change.

For this project we will use Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism for a proof of concept system to eventually be implemented as a tool in important crops. CRISPR systems will be inserted into the A. thaliana genome via Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation in order to manipulate the expression of a select set of genes via targeting of their respective promoter regions. To decrease gene expression we will use CRISPR interference (CRISPRi), and to increase gene expression we will be employ CRISPR activation (CRISPRa).

The four initial genes of interest to be regulated are CLE18, which is responsible for root length and therefore drought response, ICE2 which regulates cold tolerance, SPCH which regulates stomatal development and DXR which regulates formation of isoprenoids and chlorophyll content.

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.