Why plants?
As we have said, plants are a very important part of our project and team (See “Project description” section). We believe that plants could be a real solution to a lot of the problems that humanity has nowadays. This is why we have chosen plants as the organism we are going to work with.
We contacted with the Institute of Agriobiotechnology (IdAB-CSIC), where we work with a research group specialized in plant synthetic biology. We learned how to prepare the biobricks necessary to generate modified plants and all the tricks to work with plants and take care of them in a proper way.
Plants in our project
Synthetic biology, especially when involves plants, is one of the areas of investigation that has more future. A recent research paper published in Frontiers in Plant Science shows the number of benefits we can obtain from plant synthetic biology, such as making plants capable of producing complex pharmaceuticals. Plants are one of the best ways of solving today's problems in a cheap, simple, and sustainable way. As is commonly known, one of the advantages of plants is that they are autotrophic organisms, so the only needs they have is some water, soil, and sunlight.
Therefore, in this project we have generated CO2 biosensor plants for monitoring air quality. This is why the only material resources we need to have a functional CO2 biosensor are: the seed of our modified plant, some water, and soil.
The latest events such as the social problems in undeveloped countries for the extraction of rare metals have shown us that the lack of resources such as materials or energy is becoming an important and disturbing problem in our society. Plants could be an excellent solution to this problem.
Improve the world with modified plants
Navarra_BG is always trying to make a better world by giving solution with modified plants, because plants would be very useful to solve human problems.
One of the principal advantages of plants is that they are pretty economic and we, humans, know how to cultivate plants in a short period of time with not a lot of resources, because of the simplicity of the cares they need.
Imagine that you want to know if humans could live in a specific area, in which there is no certainty of air quality, you could plant some seeds modified with our parts and you would know if humans could live there without wasting any resources such as electronic components in the case of electric CO2 sensors.
The transport of the future plants that can sensate the CO2 levels is also an important aspect because we want to reach a lot of places in an effective, economic and sustainable way, this is why we think that the transport of modified organisms should be very simple. This is why plant synthetic biology has another advantage, the plants grow by seeds, specifically, the Nicotiana benthamiana, the plant that we are modifying (See “Proof of concept” section), seeds are so little and resistant so the transport of huge quantities of seeds should be easy.
As we have previously said, plants have a positive impact on human health, a very important aspect if you want people to work better and be happier (See “Project description” section).
1Barnum CR, Endelman BJ and Shih PM (2021) Utilizing Plant Synthetic Biology to Improve Human Health and Wellness. Front. Plant Sci. 12:691462. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.691462