Our Project

How wonderful is it if you can see flowers in full glory in any season? Flowers are beautiful and fruits are delicious. If flowers bloom whenever you like, you could eat tasty fruits and see beautiful flowers in any time. It is what we humans have been looking for that the technology to make flowers bloom. And this is the technology that is going to be implemented by iGEM Kyoto.

There is a plant hormone that was not discovered for about 70 years since existence was foretold in 1936. In 2007, it is confirmed that FLOWERING LOCUS T discovered by Mr.Araki (Kyoto University) is the plant hormone, Florigen.

Florigen controls and triggers flowering in plants. Florigen is made in leaves and then it is translocated to shoot apex of a plant.　Florigen activates flowering determining gene in shoot apex.

We will create Flower Fairy E.coli. This will make Florigen and introduce it into plants! This enables us to make flowers bloom on demand!

When we wish to achieve our goal, there are several hurdles. First, needless to say, we must make Escherichia.coli express Florigen that functions correctly. Second, we must make secretion system without cell death because Flower Fairy E.coli have to secrete florigen constantly when they are injected into plant and switched on. Third, Florigen which is secreted must be introduced into plant cells without damage.

We iGEM Kyoto team has 3 groups. 2 of 3 groups, Florigen and secretion, concern main theme and the other group, Golden Gate group, concerns our sub theme. Florigen group aims to make E.coli express and introduce Florigen into plant cells. Secretion group aims to make secretion pathway through outer and inner membranes of E.coli without cell death. Golden Gate group aims to verify Golden Gate Assembly and use the assembly to study what will happen if we construct many promoters into same parts.

Future Works

We noticed only flowering and florigen in this time but there are many many other plant hormones. We made translocation pathway from E.coli into plant cells, so we will be able to introduce plant hormones into plant cells if E.coli can make them. It means we can control plant growth in any stage through genetically engineered E.coli. In the future that is not so far, we will be able to meddle in plants' growth――germinating, elongation, flowering, and fructification. We human will finally accomplish a technology that control plants perfectly.