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  Consistent Plant Yield  Easy to Control  Mobility  No Pesticides  What are the types of hydroponics?  Solution Culture  Aeroponics  Static  Medium Culture  Continuous Flow

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  Isabelle Leo  Niharika Kareddy  Leanne Lupone  Shwetha Sundar  Melissa Langley  Manasa Raman  Vithusha  Kristine Moran Thirumavalavan  Jasmine Garani  Rishi Gupta  Benn Bluestein-Veyra  Anastasia Alekseyeva  Noosha Uddin  Domenic Roberto  Seth Judson  Olivia Roman  Divya Muthusamy  Shelly Mishra  Raghav Sundar  Lia Mongado  Ryan McCann  Daniel Gurfinkel

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?