Team:Hainan China/Implementation

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Implementation

After successful implementation of our iGEM project in laboratory, we are looking forward to applying the nutritional enhancement strategy in the real world situations. We would envision the future application of our project in the following aspects.

Who can use our probiotics?

Our probiotic bacteria for coral nutritional supplementation can be a good choice for rescuing the coral reefs from serious bleaching by providing nutrients for the coral polyps and zooxanthellae. Countries in tropical coastal regions that have suffered coral bleaching may be interested in the applications of our probiotic bacteria in their coral reefs.

How did we ensure the safety of the project?

The probiotic is a genetically engineered bacteria Pseudomonas denitrificans which is originally a part of the coral symbiosis. It can thus be introduced back into the symbiotic system. Moreover, Pseudomonas denitrificans is not known to be harmful to human beings and marine ecosystem. To ensure its full safety to the environment and humans, we will insert a “suicide” gene into Pseudomonas denitrificans in the future so that when it is away from coral symbiosis, the gene will be up regulated to kill the cells themselves. The suicide gene may be induced when the surrounding is lack of glycerol produced in the marine envirnment only by Zooxanthellae)

What will we do to move to real world application of our project?

Our first effort is to move the engineered Pseudomonas denitrificans from the lab to the real world. We have signed an agreement of long-term cooperation with Sanya Coral Reef Ecological Research Institute and established a marine cultivation tank in their site in beach where our probiotic bacterium is continuously cultivated in the seawater. This scaling up arrangement will increase the practicality of our project, for it tranfer our probiotics from the artificial growth medium in the lab into the real seawater.
In addition, we have used mathematical modeling to predict production of VB₁₂ by the engineered Pseudomonas denitrificans under varying growth conditions, which enables us to compare model predictions with actual Pseudomonas denitrificans growth for optimal VB₁₂ production in real seawater. In the near future, we may seek collaboration to establish a pilot plant near the seaside where the coral reefs are bleached to grow Pseudomonas denitrificans for spreading it directly to the bleached coral reefs to evaluate the recovery effectiveness.

What are the other efforts by us to improve the effectiveness of our approach?

We have established a long-term marine cultivation tank in Sanya Coral Reef Ecological Research Institute for continuous experiments on the prevention of coral bleaching by nutrition, we plan to optimize the growth conditions for the nutrition-enhanced corals in the sea water tank. Moreover, we will consider how to manipulate VB₁₂ production by the probiotics so that they will not over produce the nutrition for coral and Zooxanthellae. Ultimately, we will make our project suitable for in situ application in the real marine environment for the rescue of bleached coral reefs.