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Team:Cambridge-JIC/Marchantia
From 2014.igem.org
Marchantia Polymorpha
Let us introduce to you to Marchantia Polymorpha (or Polly for short). On this page you can find general information about our little plant, the reasons we love her and her development in becoming the new chassis for plant Synthetic Biology (and some trivia at the end).
Marchantia, the new chassis
OpenPlant
Synthetic Biology conferences used to be like vegetable gardens (or zoos), with every researcher working on different organisms: a longer courgette here, a sweeter tomato there. Great to make some tasty dishes but a real halt for science. The animal field concentrated their forces from dogs and cats to Drosophila fly and the C.elegant worm, and the green handed people went for Arabidopsis or Tabacco. Focusing on these few and simple organisms allowed science, techniques to be shared and developed by a community and core concepts, true for any higher organisms, emanated from this thrust.
Arabidopsis, is a great plant however some of its disadvantages, long life cycle, height, complex development is refraining progress. A wave is now building up as we speak behind Marchantia to develop it as the new tool for Synthetic Biologists and Plant Scientists. _ Watch this space_ (or even better: read on!)
The Beauty of Simplicity: Advantages of Marchy
Why Marchantia as the new plant chassis?
For any system to be adopted and developed and made better it needs to be: simple, accessible and better than any previous system. Marchantia Polymorpha is just this.
- Ancestor to all plants, she illustrates them all.Her simple basic genome is more malleable
- Small in size makes for easy mass culture
- Rapid growth and germination reduces drastically the time of experiments (a big down fall of Arabodopsis)
- Easy transformability with Agorobacteria and possibility of electroporating the spores!
- Dioecious. Sexual reproduction allows for crossing of two strains of plants. Or if you want to keep an isogenic line, you can propagate her asexually.
- Easy long term storage of spores that requires no maintenance!
- Open Community Established
Collaborators and future for iGEM
The Welcome Trust has recently given a huge push to the Marchantia Lovers. And these are sprouting from everywhere. For future iGEM groups who'd like to join this Marchantia Community, here are some of the people who are already in the stream (and would love to here from you!)
For advice, plant strains to get started or just some info, contact:- Us!
- The Haseloff group in Cambridge- (home of the OpenPlant)
- Tokyo
- MIT
- JIC
- UEA??
- Online Community!
Who is Marchantia?
Let's leave the botanical jargon and head to the gardens:
