Team:KU Leuven/Project/HoneydewSystem

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tree ladybugcartoon

We aim to achieve a sustainable way to reduce the damage caused by aphid pests, and offer an effective alternative for insecticides. Our modified E. coli (‘BanAphids’, meaning ‘to ban aphids’ as well as with ‘benefits’) would imitate insecticides by using the aphid’s own alarm pheromone, E-β-farnesene, (EBF) to repel them off the plant. On top of that we want to attract aphid predators such as the ladybug by using methyl salicylate (MeS), a phytohormone. This way we make sure the aphids are thoroughly removed from the plant.

We have established what might be possible hurdles in introducing this system in the agricultural industry. First we have to make sure that the plant cell’s metabolism is not over burdened. Besides that we have to take into account that aphids might habituate to constitutive expression of EBF (De Vos et al., 2010, Kunert et al., 2010). Finally, we do not want to attract the aphid’s natural predators when they are not needed.

We thought of two different methods to carry out our system. One method would be to spray our BanAphids onto the plants. Keeping into account the possible hurdles we mentioned before, BanAphids will produce MeS in response to an external signal that indicates the presence of aphids, in order to reduce the burden on the plant cell’s metabolism and attract predators only when needed. This external signal is honeydew, since aphids produce high amounts of this. Honeydew is a very glucose rich substance, which is the reason why ants ‘farm’ aphids, in order to milk their honeydew.

Tet repressor under low glucose promoter

AroG, LacI construct


pCaiF is a low glucose promoter, so when aphids are present on the plant and thereby honeydew, TetR will not be transcribed. pTetR, a TetR repressible promoter, will be active in this case so that lacI and aroG* will be transcribed. aroG encodes for the enzyme 3-deoxy-D-arabino-heptulosonate-7-phosphate (DAHP) synthase, which will convert erythose-4-phosphate into 3-deoxy-arabine-heptulosonate-7-phosphate. We have mutated aroG into aroG* in order to inhibit the negative feedback mechanism of phenylalanine to increase the activity of DAHP synthase so that the chorismate concentration is increased.

Chorismate pathway


The following construct will convert the chorismate produced into salicylic acid and then into MeS. The original BioBrick from the 2006 MIT team (Bba_J45700) contained a lac promoter in front of the pchBA gene. The pchBA gene encodes an enzyme that converts chorismate into salicylic acid. Since this would interfere with our system (we use LacI), we replaced this promoter with another pTetR promoter.

MIT BioBrick 2006 for salicylic acid to MeS conversion

MeS construct to convert salicylic acid into MeS


cpram is a constitutive promoter so EBF synthase will be constitutively transcribed and EBF constitutively expressed. However, there is a lac operator present and since LacI is transcribed when honeydew is present (see above), EBF synthase transcription is inhibited in the presence of honeydew. In the absence of aphids, EBF is constitutively expressed and aphids are thus repelled. However, as mentioned before, EBF could lose its aphid repellent effect due to habituation.

EBF construct


So if certain aphids do happen to escape the EBF repellent signal, the MeS acts as a counter signal and attracts natural predators of the aphid such as ladybugs and green lacewings. Aphids will activate the MeS cycle due to the presence of honeydew.

E-β-Farnesene

EBF serves as the most universal aphid alarm pheromone. It is released from the cornicles of the aphids to warn others against upcoming danger, such as the natural predators of aphids. Because of the fact that EBF is highly susceptible to oxidation, we want to make our BanAphids produce EBF regularly.

Methyl Salicylate - Wetlab

Methyl salicylate is a pheromone released by plants when they are attacked by aphids. It activates plant defence systems, as well as attract predators of the aphids, such as the ladybug or the green lacewing. In the lab we have focused on increasing the production of methyl salicylate of an existing brick, by increasing the production of its precursor, chorismate.

Methyl Salicylate - Modelling

We have modeled the production system of methyl salicylate by using the transcription, translation and protein degradation rate in order to calculate the mRNA and protein flux. We also brought the kinetics of methyl salicylate synthesis into account.

qPCR

We did a qPCR to check whether our genes of interest are properly transcribed. Also, the amount of mRNA we can measure with qPCR could serve as input data for our methyl salicylate model.