The description of each project must clearly attribute work done by the students and distinguish it
from work done by others, including host labs, advisors, instructors, sponsors, professional website
designers, artists, and commercial services.
Contributions from those outside of the team are stated on our Attributions page
Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device used in your project/central to your project
and submit this part to the iGEM Registry.
The plant specific promoter BS3 which is induced by the TALE AvrBS3.
The methyl-jasmonate induced plant specific promoter PDF 1.2
The AvrBS3 TAL Effector which induces the BS3 promoter.
Silver
Requirement
Notes
Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.
The apoptosis regulator Bax works as expected and rapidly induced cell death in leaves.
The plant specific promoter BS3 was able to drive expression of coding sequences in plants only in the presence of the TALE, AvrBS3.
The AvrBS3 TAL Effector was able to induce expression from the BS3 promoter.
The methyl-jasmonate induced plant specific promoter PDF 1.2 was able to drive expression of coding regions in plants. Expression was up-regulated by methyl-jasmonate but there was some background expression, probably caused by our delivery chassis (Agrobacterium tumefaciens)
Document the characterisation of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.
We have documented the use of our parts in the registry:
The methyl-jasmonate induced plant specific promoter PDF 1.2
Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry.
All the parts above, plus a few more, were submitted to the registry. See our team parts page
iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability,
social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Articulate at least one question encountered by your team, and
describe how your team considered the(se) question(s) within your project. Include attributions to all experts and stakeholders
consulted.
Our project uses a plant chassis. Historically, especially in Europe, the media and general public have not accepted the genetic modification of plants. As our plants are designed as 'sentinels' (early-warning canaries!) and not as food plants, we were interested to find out how people would respond. We were also interested in whether people thought scientists have an ethical obligation to work towards food security and if they thought that biotechnology and synthetic biology should be used to meet that need. Please see the Policy and Practices page to read about this work. Contributions from others are documented on out Attributions page.
Gold
Requirement
Notes
Improve the function OR characterization of an existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team or your own institution
in a previous year), enter this information in the Registry.
Our team has improved BBa_J04450 by adding flanking sequences to make a series of four "GoldenGate Flipper modules" (Documented as BBa_K1467100, BBa_K1467200, BBa_K1467300 and BBa_K1467400) that can be used to convert four types of standard part defined in the GoldenGate MoClo Assembly Standard into standard BioBricks. This was done by inserting an inverted pair of BsaI recognition sequences either side of the original RFP reporter part. The flipper reaction is a one-pot, one-step, digestion-ligation GoldenGate cloning reaction. When cloning is successful the colonies become white as the RFP sequence is replaced by the new part. After the reaction is complete, no part of the BsaI recognition sequence will remain between the BioBrick suffix and the part.
Help any registered iGEM team from another school or institution by, for example, characterizing a part, debugging a construct,
or modeling or simulating their system.
We collaborated with two other teams (Valencia UPV and Cambridge-JIC who had chosen to use a plant chassis and were interested in GoldenGate cloning to develop a new RFC for plants!! We also sent Team Valencia UPV chromoproteins (AmilCP and AmilGFP) and our Flipper parts (see above) for converting any of their GoldenGate parts to BioBricks for submission to the registry.
iGEM projects involve important questions beyond the bench, for example relating to (but not limited to) ethics, sustainability,
social justice, safety, security, or intellectual property rights. Describe an approach that your team used to address at least
one of these questions. Evaluate your approach, including whether it allowed you to answer your question(s), how it influenced the
team’s scientific project, and how it might be adapted for others to use (within and beyond iGEM).
After our initial Policy and Practices event, we once again ventured out again to facilitate a more in-depth discussion in a ‘Science Café’ style debate on the topics surrounding our project, which included: genetic modification of plants and other organisms, crop disease, food security, the ethics behind scientific discovery, and the way scientists conduct themselves. We followed up this event with the ethics committee at our university initiate a process of ethical public consultation on these issues. More information on both of these studies are given on our Policy and Practices page. Contributions are detailed on ourAttributions page.
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