IISER Pune iGEM
Throughout the iGEM season, our team was fortunate to collaborate with the IISER-Pune iGEM team, working on the shared objective of overexpressing the enzyme ACC deaminase. In our project, we were over overexpressing ACC deaminase, along with other enzymes, for the application of heat-resilient wheat. The IISER-Pune team was also overexpressing ACCD deaminase, but for the application of reducing the negative effects of waterlogging in plant roots.
We collaborated on project-specific goals as well as general goals in Human Practices and Dry-Lab in numerous instances.
Human Practices
Starting in June, our teams started discussing the common goals of our projects, including the social implications of the solutions we were developing. We were both creating solutions to mitigate climate-based problems that affect food production. Recovering from low crop yield is challenging in particular for developing countries that have fewer financial and technological resources, and can increase food insecurities in the areas dependent on those crops. Both team’s projects hoped to mitigate these problems.
In discussing these topics, we realized that we could provide researchers in the third world with increased access to synthetic biology innovations meant to help them, like ours. To reach this goal, both teams invited speakers from both developed (Canada) and developing (Peru, India, Uganda) countries to share initiatives they’ve observed that have greatly increased access to synthetic biology technology. The creation of maker labs and emphasis on open science initiatives were discussed, as well as biofoundries, providing a basis for other developing countries to mimic these methods. More details on our "International Accessibility to Synthetic Biology Innovations" Panel can be found on our Education & Communication page.
Dry-Lab
Starting in July, our teams exchanged expertise on reaction kinetics modeling and climate modeling.
Our team’s mathematical modeling work on modeling factors of the synthesis of ethylene inspired the IISER Pune team to do the same for their ACCD reaction. Additionally, they were interested in measuring the levels of ACCD released by plant roots for its uptake by bacteria like the ones they were engineering. They asked us to design and execute Wet-Lab experiments for these measurements. Due to time and resource constraints, we were unable to carry out the measurement experiments, and thus only planned them, as detailed below.
On the other hand, their team was implementing climate modeling for predicting and measuring the land areas of the world that are affected by waterlogging. We believed our project could benefit from a similar approach to view the geographic areas whose wheat yield would be affected by heat. Therefore, they offered to model the parameters we were interested in obtaining from satellite data (ex: areas that are growing spring wheat, precipitation, temperature during the grain filling season) to then overlap for a summary of locations that would be affected by decreased wheat yield. They were able to obtain information and begin the modeling for a few of the parameters, but not synthesize it all into a single model. Regardless, we believe our collaboration allowed both our teams to gain further insight into our project, especially past the competition if these efforts are sustained.
