Team:KU Leuven/Project/MeS
From 2013.igem.org
Secret garden
Congratulations! You've found our secret garden! Follow the instructions below and win a great prize at the World jamboree!
- A video shows that two of our team members are having great fun at our favourite company. Do you know the name of the second member that appears in the video?
- For one of our models we had to do very extensive computations. To prevent our own computers from overheating and to keep the temperature in our iGEM room at a normal level, we used a supercomputer. Which centre maintains this supercomputer? (Dutch abbreviation)
- We organised a symposium with a debate, some seminars and 2 iGEM project presentations. An iGEM team came all the way from the Netherlands to present their project. What is the name of their city?
Now put all of these in this URL:https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/(firstname)(abbreviation)(city), (loose the brackets and put everything in lowercase) and follow the very last instruction to get your special jamboree prize!
Figure 1ǀ Pea aphids extracting sap from the stem and leaves of garden peas.
Synopsis
During a long period of co-evolution, plants and aphids have established a complex interaction. On the one hand, aphids have established complex life cycles involving extensive phenotype plasticity with rapid population growth (Blackman and Eastop, 1984) and a very short generation time (Morrison and Peairs, 1998). On the other hand, plants have also evolved delicate and complicated defence systems comprising constitutive defence traits and defence pathways induced upon aphid attack (Chen 2008). Breeders and growers are still struggling to find an efficient strategy for aphid control in major crop plants, as the damage can run in the millions. The KU Leuven iGEM project has an answer to this problem. Our project consists of a genetically engineered bacteria that can reduce the aphid damage on a sustainable way by hacking into their communication system.