SUPERBACTERIA! Presented by Sharon High Schools Basically Acid iGEM - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s

SUPERBACTERIA!

Presented by Sharon High School’s Basically Acid iGEM Jamboree 2013

Agenda

 Hydroponics  Parts  Superbacteria saves the day!  Safety  Our Team

Hydroponics

 What is hydroponics?

 An alternative method for growing plants that does not use soil.

 What are the advantages of hydroponics?

 Conserves water  Easy to Control  No Pesticides  Consistent Plant Yield  Mobility

 What are the types of hydroponics?

 Solution Culture  Static  Continuous Flow  Aeroponics  Medium Culture

Hydroponics in Action

A Hydroponics Setup

Parts

pH Sensor (BBa_K116001) Green Florescent Protein (GFP) (BBa_E0840)

Superbacteria saves the day!

 Our Idea

 A bacteria that eliminates the need for machinery to monitor and

adjust nutrient levels in hydroponics.

 Our Project

 Our project is the first step of the Superbacteria: bacteria that will

indicate when the pH is not ideal for growth.

 Why Superbacteria Works

 Easily controllable and serves the same purpose as machines

 Problems Superbacteria Solves

 Expensive  Only one plant at a time can use this machinery  Mass plant death due to malfunction

What a Proton Pump Could Do

 V-ATPases are found in many eukaryotic cells  They are found in both intracellular organelles as well as on the plasma

membranes and are used to balance pH in intracellular and extracellular environments

 One of the proton pump subunit genes, ATP6C, has been identified  The pH sensor and color reporter will be linked with repressor  When the bacteria is not in a in optimal pH the repressor will not be

expressed and then the proton pump will begin to function

 This would entail that a proton pump could be integrated into an E.Coli

cellular membrane

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11519050

Safety

 Some safety concerns include:

 Adding foreign substances to a plant’s nourishing medium can

cause disruption

 The bacteria could leak into surrounding areas  Acid rain or water can change the pH

 One solution to these issues is to make the bacteria

dependent on the medium.

Our Team Members

 Jasmina Prabhakara  Leanne Lupone  Manasa Raman  Jasmine Garani  Anastasia Alekseyeva  Seth Judson  Divya Muthusamy  Raghav Sundar  Ryan McCann  Isabelle Leo  Shwetha Sundar  Vithusha

Thirumavalavan

 Benn Bluestein-Veyra  Domenic Roberto  Olivia Roman  Shelly Mishra  Lia Mongado  Daniel Gurfinkel  Niharika Kareddy  Melissa Langley  Kristine Moran  Rishi Gupta  Noosha Uddin

Our Mentors

For dealing with us, they really deserve a medal!

• Mr. Dixon
• Mr. Snow

A Very Special Thanks to Superintendent Timothy Farmer.

• Mr. Farmer was very

supportive of our team, and we would never have been able to make it to the Jamboree without him.

Thank you to New England Bio Labs

Thank you!

Any questions?