Team:UESTC-China

Introduction

A s the development of science and technology, a large amount of contaminants are full of our daily life. It's well-known that chemical materials are widely used in our surroundings, such as new apartments, offices, brand new cars, and etc, which may lead to excess release of formaldehyde in closed space. Formaldehyde, as the main contaminants, will cause serious diseases including allotriosmia, skin allergy, lung dysfunction, immunity dysfunction, and even cause cancer. Nowadays, people mainly get rid of the formaldehyde by ventilating the closed condition or using air purifier. However, these methods exist some limitation, and cannot degrade formaldehyde effectively.
We made a survey about formaldehyde pollution. The results showed that people paid high attention to the indoor formaldehyde pollution, and they hoped to decrease the concentration of formaldehyde effectively using a safe and environmentally friendly. Based on this survey result, we wanted use synthetic biology to cultivate a super plant guard which can remove formaldehyde effectively.
There is a HCHO-fixation pathway in methylotrophs which is called ribulose monophosphate (RuMP) pathway. HPS and PHI are two key enzymes in this pathway. In the meantime, there is a formaldehyde folate-independent pathway in plants. FALDH and FDH exist in this pathway playing an important role. In 2014 iGEM project, we hoped to effectively integrate formaldehyde metabolism related genes from methylotrophs and plants, reconstruct a new formaldehyde metabolism pathway in tobacco which is used as transgenic acceptprs, and achieve the goal of formaldehyde Phytoremediation in confined space.
In addition, we co-expressed gene AHA2 with formaldehyde metabolism pathway. AHA2 is a gene from Arabidopsis thaliana which is used to regulate stomata opening. And it could effectively enlarge the stomata opening when it was specifically expressed in tobacco leaves. We hoped to increase formaldehyde physical absorbing efficiency, ensured the substrate supply for the reconstructed formaldehyde metabolism pathway, and further increased the efficiency of formaldehyde degradation of super plants.
In the meantime, considering the biosafety of genetically modified organism, we brought in cysteine protease expression part. The transgenic tobacco pollen aborted through specifically expressed cysteine protease gene in tobacco tapetum, and we ensured the biosafety of super plants consequently.
With the more and more achievement has been harvested about the super plant , we organized various activities such as questionnaire survey, mini-lecture, videos to vigorously promote synthetic biology knowledge ,iGEM and our “super plant”.
Along with the hectic and happy summer vacation, UESTC-China team has completed our project successfully with the efforts of all members. Let’s meet at MIT and share each other’s harvests.