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Team:SharonBasicallyAcid
From 2013hs.igem.org
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| Team SharonBasicallyAcid |
| Official Team Profile |
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Team
Tell us about your team, your school!
It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, It’s SUPERBACTERIA!
Our SuperBacteria will detect dangerously low or high levels of various nutrients, indicate a fluctuation with a flashing red or blue light, and correct the concentrations by secreting or absorbing the appropriate nutrient. It is the savior of hydroponics that the world has been looking for! Hydroponics is a system in which plants are grown in a nutrient-rich solution. These bacteria are self-sustaining and will cut the costs of expensive machinery that is currently required to monitor nutrient levels. Currently we are working on having our SuperBacteria detect and indicate non-ideal levels of pH.
Project
What are you working on this semester?
We are planning to create a pH sensor/expression device. This device would allow bacteria to sense the pH of their environment and then indicate that pH by producing a color change. We think this could be used in hydroponics to indicate that the growth medium is at a proper pH. Eventually we would like to insert a gene that can respond to pH changes by secreting Hydrogen ions or Hydroxyl ions.
Hydroponics:
When a little kid explains how to grow plants, he usually includes soil in his list of materials. But thanks to hydroponics, this is no longer necessary.
Hydroponics is a system to grow terrestrial plants with their roots inside a mineral nutrient solution in an inert medium, such as gravel, mineral wood, or perlite, instead of soil.
There are many advantages to using hydroponics as opposed to growing plants in soil:
Water either stays in the system, or is reused
Easier to control nutrient levels, especi.
ally for aeroponics, and continuous flow hydroponics
Controlled, closed system --> no pollution; no pesticides required
healthy environment to grow --> steady growth of plants, good yield, healthy plant products for consumption
Pests and diseases are easier to get rid of than in soil because of the container's mobility (no need for pesticides)
Types of Hydroponics:
Solution Culture: uses a solution to supply nutrients to plants.
Static: The plant root sits in a jar containing the nutrient-rich solution
algae may form if the water is not covered properly -> must use an opaque cover
Continuous Flow: the solution containing the nutrients flows through a circuit
large storage tank that is separate from the plants
easy to maintain the temperature and nutrient concentration
Aeroponics: roots are sprayed with the nutrient solution
suspended in the air
plants live longer because they get more CO2 and O2 in the air
saves water and nutrients, lowering costs
Medium Culture: Roots are placed in a solid medium, and it is named depending on the specific type of medium used. Examples include sand or gravel culture.
sub-irrigation
top irrigation
Reservoirs can be built with plastic, glass, metal, wood, concrete
Disadvantages:
easy to be over watered (less of a problem for aeroponics, big problem for static system)
Hard to keep different types of plants together ( each requires different pH and nutrient levels); need different containment systems
Requires a lot of machinery to make sure the system is working in perfect order --> very expensive!!!!!. If not:
If something goes wrong in the system, all the plants die very quickly
Without soil, it is easy for the pH and nutrient levels to get messed up
With our bacteria the need for these machines will be eliminated our bacteria will be able to tell us the conditions of the nutrient water and indicate it, allowing us to respond to the condition.
Notebook
Show us how you spent your days.
Results/Conclusions
What did you achieve over the course of your semester?
Safety
What safety precautions did your team take? Did you take a safety training course? Were you supervised at all times in the lab? Although we are focusing on the first step of the project this year, it is important for us to consider the safety precautions we must take in the future. Our bacteria is meant to indicate and adjust the pH of a specific area. While this is helpful if the bacteria is controlled, a lack of constraint concerning the ability of the bacteria to travel could potentially be harmful. In order to prevent this, we have incorporated a part into the bacteria in order to disable it should it migrate.
There are no current technologies that assist growing plants that require a low pH. Farmers grow these particular plants, such as tomatoes and blueberries, in an artificially acidic environment. Adding acids to the soil can be detrimental to the environment in many aspects. The primary concern is what the consequences would be if the chemicals leaked out of the system and into surrounding areas. It could contaminate other plants that need a high pH to grow, thus killing crops that supply entire towns with food. There are also uncontrollable factors, such as acid rain or water runoff that can change the pH. Because of this, this method requires a lot of manpower to constantly maintain the correct pH for the plants to grow in. Our solution is better than directly adding chemicals to the environment because it takes all of these issues into consideration. Using a bacteria that would be able to change the pH on its own is clearly the best method to growing plants in acidic conditions. Because the bacteria releases protons on the basis of the surrounding pH, we would not need to worry about uncontrollable environmental factors changing the pH because the bacteria does not take into consideration what is changing the pH, simply the quantitative data. We would not need to maintain the soil so regularly because bacteria reproduces in the soil by natural causes. Lastly, we can control the bacteria in case of leakage outside the system by programming cell death with a separately manufactured bacteria, protein, or chemical.
Attributions
Who worked on what?
Human Practices
What impact does/will your project have on the public?
Economic Considerations: Common methods of decreasing the pH of soil in existence now include using sulfur compounds such as magnesium sulfate of ammonium sulphate. While these substances are not expensive in small quantities (a 21 pound bag can be found at Home Depot for about $25) and may be suited for use in small, private gardens, it becomes expensive when a large area is involved. Our proton pump incorporated into a bacterium could be, in the long term, sufficiently cheaper, for bacteria can self replicate and large quantities of it can be produced in a relatively short time span. Once the initial bacteria are created, having them reproduce into a large quantity of substance can be done virtually cost-free.
Fun!
What was your favorite team snack?? Have a picture of your team mascot?
