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Team:Glendale CC AZ/Project/Background
From 2013.igem.org
Overview
Desert areas, making up almost one-quarter of the Earth surface, are home to 500 million people. As a result of human habitation, every continent in the world except Antarctica is increasingly and adversely affected by desertification. Studies forecasting climate trends indicate that desert regions will face an even drier future – in regard to both climatic factors and drought conditions – stemming from the influence of human activities. One human-created impact on these desert environments is pollution. Many remediation challenges exist specific to the extremely dry conditions present in these arid locales. For example, what happens when a desert area is polluted with such substances as plastics, where commonly employed bioremediation agents used for environmental cleanup cannot survive desert climates’ high temperature and low humidity extremes? Our team has developed a kit containing biological components that will provide desiccation resistance to organisms used to facilitate the elimination of contaminants, like plastics, in desert-like environments. Our goal is to design an assortment of complementary parts, which will strengthen organisms and help to broaden their climatic and geographic range of effectiveness. While some parts included in our kit could, conceivably, provide resistance to other types of stresses, such as ionizing radiation, we will initially focus on desiccation. Because of its potential to expand the extent of the efficacy of these biological breakdown expedients into even climatically extreme territories, our kit could be a valuable addition to any bioremediation project.
Growing Desert
Desert regions are currently found scattered around the globe, but, with the advent of global warming, both the boundaries of these regions and the appearance of new areas that could be seen as “desert-like” are increasing at a rapid rate. Rainfall is predicted to decrease by as much as 20% by the end of the century, causing water sources to be depleted and wells to run dry, ultimately resulting in the death of plants and animals. Consequently, humans will migrate to more climatically hospitable locations, which, in short order, has the likelihood of creating the very same problems in these newly habited areas not previously impacted by desertification, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle of depletion, desiccation, and death. Irrigation used for agriculture may, in the long term, lead to soil with salinity levels too high to support plants. Higher temperatures can also produce an increasing number of wildfires, which alter desert landscapes through the elimination of slow-growing trees and shrubs, followed by an influx of highly flammable fuel in the form of fast-growing grasses. In addition, as glaciers, which provide a large portion of the water used for agricultural and domestic purposes in the deserts of the southwestern United States, South America, and Central Asia, continue to melt, the loss of these ancient sources threatens to further limit water availability in these regions. Glaciers keep melting which threatens water availability in some areas.
