Difference between revisions of "Team:SSTi-SZGD"

Project Introduction

The level of pesticide usage in China is 2.5 times above the world average. In June 2016, the total output of chemical pesticides in China was around 3.347 million tons, up by 7.17% compared with the same period of 2015. A range of chemical and physical technologies have been widely applied in the degradation of pesticide residues. These techniques are of high in accuracy and easy to be manipulated characteristics. However, the shortfalls come with high in cost, harmful to non-target organisms, food, plants and soils, and likely to cause secondary pollution, etc.

The aim of this project is to combine optogenetics and biotechnology, by using genetically modified organisms as the core carriers, to develop a novel method for degrading pesticide residues in contaminated soil. We employed a novel light inducible/repressive system that can efficiently overexpress heterogenous proteins that are able to degrade pesticides chemicals carbendazim and organophosphate pesticide, without the need of using toxic and expensive chemicals. In addition, we plan to develop a device that integrates monitoring and data-sharing functions that help applying this system to on-site pesticide residue detection and degradation. We hope to achieve a microbial degradation method with low toxicity, low cost and high efficiency which serves a positive role in maintaining ecological balance.