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From 2014.igem.org

Overall project summary

Our achievement

In our project, we create 4 kinds of transgenic plants. All of them have the resistant to two kinds of herbicides. We use the foot-and-mouth disease virus 2A polyprotein to link to two different resistant genes. In the modeling part, we try to use computer modeling to predict which kind of protein can be linked with 2A and the how the 2A polypeptide affects the protein's function.

How do we realize it?

Firstly, we found that the abuse of herbicide causes a lot of serious problems and the mix use of herbicides can decrease the dose, increase the efficacy, decrease the poison residual and expand the weed control spectrum. Therefore we want to create the transgenic plants which have the resistant to two kinds of herbicides so that when farmers use two kinds of herbicides to kill weeds, the crops will not be affected.

We want to do more

As we know, herbicide is not the only stress to crops in the agriculture industry. There are many other stress, such as pest, freezing and drought stress. So in the future, we want to use the 2A polypeptide to link the resistant genes to these stress environment. Besides, we want to improve the 2A polypeptide so that we can link more genes and the side effect to the proteins will be reduced.

Project Description

Nowadays, as the more and more use of herbicide, lots of problems have come up. Some of these problems are very serious such as the poisonous residue of herbicide and the superweed which have the resistance to the herbicide. What's more,as the students of China Agriculture University, we would like to use what we have learned to make a little improvement in the agriculture industry.

Content

References 1. Cellular automaton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton. 2. Genetic pathway of Ron Weiss(2005):Basu S, Gerchman Y, Collins C H, et al. A synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation[J]. Nature, 2005, 434(7037): 1130-1134. 3. quorum sensing system in Rhodopseudomonas palustris:Schaefer A L, Greenberg E P, Oliver C M, et al. A new class of homoserine lactone quorum-sensing signals[J]. Nature, 2008, 454(7204): 595-599.