Saving the bananas

Every time you go to the supermarket or to the local market to buy bananas you take for granted that there will be bananas readily available for you to enjoy and savour. However, banana plants are under threat and a world without bananas is more plausible than we all might imagine. Banana plants are threatened by Fusarium oxysporum fungus, a soil pathogen that affects plants entering through its root system causing its death. Bananas, apart from being a delicious fruit, have economic importance in many tropical regions. These are the reasons why the iGEM team Wageningen 2014 has designed and created BananaGuard, a genetic system in Pseudomonas putida which is able to detect the presence of F. oxysporum in the soil and produce a combination of antifungals that will inhibit the growth of the pathogen. If you want to read more about the system and our work during the last six months, the iGEM team Wageningen 2014 invites you to continue surfing around our Wiki.

Achievements

As an iGEM team we always try our best and strive to be the highest. Below are some important points why we deserve gold this year.

Bronze

• We documented and submitted 27 parts to the iGEM Registry.

Silver

• We validated and characterized the following Biobrick parts from our own project: Fusaric acid dependent promoter (Bba_K1493000), pfri (Bba_K1493200) and Kill switch genes and promoters (more at parts)
• Parts were also submitted to the registry
• We considered safety in our project by implementing a Kill-switch system and a system to prevent horizontal gene transfer.
• In collaboration with Synenergene we discussed many safety-concerning topics in synthetic biology and created techno-moral scenarios based on our project (see Synenergene).

Gold

• We improved the functions of existing BioBrick promoter parts (BBa_K1493504, BBa_K1493501) by an extensive characterization.
• We successfully collaborated with TU_Delft-Leiden iGEM from the Netherlands by quantifying the modified biofilm, formed in E. coli (see collaboration).
• We organized the first National conference where we invited Dutch iGEM teams and anticipated a collaboration with the Dutch Institute of Health and Environment (RIVM)(see National meet-up.
• A symposium and a panel session was organized to inform government officials about the risks and possibilities of synthetic biology, sparking the public discussion about the use of synthetic biology (see policy).
• To spread a word about our research and to improve the product application, we interviewed and discussed our project with the leading banana plant scientists at Wageningen University, contacted banana engineer from Canarian islands, stakeholder from Philippines and talked to consumers whose everyday diet includes bananas (see interview).

For more details check out achievements

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