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Team:KU Leuven/Project
From 2013.igem.org
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<a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/Project/Aphid_Biology" title="Team:KU_leuven">Aphid Biology</a> | <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/Project/Aphid_Biology" title="Team:KU_leuven">Aphid Biology</a> | ||
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<a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/Parts" title=Team:KU_leuven>Parts</a> | <a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/Parts" title=Team:KU_leuven>Parts</a> | ||
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Revision as of 13:14, 18 July 2013
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!
Modeling
Aphid Biology
Parts
Our goal is to reduce the damage aphids invoke on our agricultural industry on a sustainable way. The current solution is almost always using huge amounts of insecticides , which damages the ecosystem in several ways. First of all, the indiscriminatory weakening of insects means the useful insects for agriculture are also affected. Besides that the pesticides accumulate in higher organisms that eat the insects.
We want to acquire this sustainable way by using the aphid’s own alarm pheromone (β-farnesene) to scare them off. On top of that we want to attract aphid predators such as the ladybug by using methyl salicylate. This way we make sure the aphids are thoroughly removed.
We have established what might be possible hurdles in introducing this system in the agricultural industry. First we have to make sure the strain on the cell’s metabolism is limited. Beside that we have to take into account that aphids might habituate to constitutive expression of β-farnese. In third place we do not want to attract the predating insects when they are not needed. Finally methyl salicylate has an effect on a lot of – not always welcomed – insects.
To reduce the burden on the cell’s metabolism and attract predators only when needed we can produce methyl salicylate in response to an external signal that indicates the presence of aphids. By using methyl salicylate we minimise the problems of habituation, as aphids loose their warning mechanism when being habituated to β-farnese. An other way to avoid habituation of the aphids is to choose for an oscillating production of β-farnese, which requires a colony-wide synchronized oscillating system.
