Modeling is an essential tool in capturing and understanding dynamic systems in science. It allows us to gain insight, simulate behavior, and improve design - all to contribute to our end goal of implementing our bacteria into the real world. To ensure the practicality of our project, we sought to understand when, what, where, why, and how our solution should be implemented. We’ll answer those questions starting with the Maxent Model, then the Toxin-Antitoxin Model, and finally, the Economic Model.
We utilized the MaxEnt software to predict the potential distribution and to understand the environmental impact of Foc TR4 in both the current and in the future. This gave us a better understanding on how environmental factors could influence banana growth and TR4 spread.
We created a set of ODEs to model the behavior of our root-localization kill switch, also referred to as the Toxin-Antitoxin system. This allows us to predict the survival of our bacteria in various environmental conditions.
We established a bioeconomic model to quantify how our prototype would ease the economic losses from the TR4 pandemic, both locally in Taiwan and for individual farmers. The model also provides a reference for our product marketing plan.