Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/2.2.1

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CH2.2.1 - FOOD & ENERGY

Example for food:

iGarden is a toolkit that lets one to grow a personalized garden:

1. Knockdown of plant allergens to make safer foods
Two types of RNA were designed to knockdown the protein that is similar to Arabidopsis in pollen causing seasonal allergy. Other RNAs were made to delete the allergens in other common plants in home gardening.

2. Novel flavors for nutritious foods to be more favorable
Sour flavor can be received as sweet as miraculin binds to tongue receptor. Also the protein, Brazzein originally provides sweetness in fruits can be given to plants by inserting the corresponding genes into the vector and transforming them to seed through bacteria and the flower. Aside from the flavor, banana and mint scents could be added to plants through plant-specific promoter to make the scent-altering system for a particular plant.

3. Modification of plant metabolism to color the white petals
White flower can be colored into red or orange through accumulation of the pigment, carotenoids via gene knockdown to enzymes that catalyse the related metabolism and specific promoter for expression and localization.

Plants are modified through several steps. All constructs were made in bacteria, and once complete, they were being cloned into the BioBrick agrobacterium vectors. Bacteria were then transformed with the constructs via electroporation, and flowers were dipped into the transgenic bacteria. In the final step the transformed seeds were harvested and screened for the designed constructs using antibiotic selection.

Specific Human Practice of iGarden:

"Genetic fence" is designed specifically for these plants to grow within the area the gardener prefers. Plants can only grow inside the genetic fence but not outside of the fence. Hence, the genetically modified seeds will not be released and neither its modified genes.

Source: https://2010.igem.org/Team:Harvard/vectors

Example for Energy:

Several kinds of renewable resources have been developed to generate electricity, but the efficiency of the energy production from these resources is very low compared to the non-renewable ones. During cheese production, a by-product called whey is produced, and whey disposal is a problem to creameries as it causes water pollution.

Even though microorganisms do not naturally have an efficient pathway of both lactose-cleaving and ethanol-producing, synthetic biologists designed a novel pathways from the nature, selected the powerful enzymes and combined the genes of each essential component to produce a new microorganism that gives the highest yield of ethanol from lactose

Source: https://2009.igem.org/Team:UNIPV-Pavia

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