Team:TPR China/Design
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In our mission to create a solution to eliminate the locust plague. We designed a rapidly deployable locust attraction scheme, the core of which is to synthesis specific locust aggregation pheromone 4-Vinylanisole to attract locusts and prepare for further rapid and effective eradication in the attraction area. Furthermore, an engineered bacteria which can degrade phenylacetonitrile was successfully created, avoiding its interference to the trapping effect. Through synthesis of 4-Vinylanisole and degradation of Phenylacetonitrile, locusts are “attracted” together and the site-specific control of locust swarms is realized.
In the synthesis of 4VA, we tried to search for known and common small molecules which have the similar chemical structure to 4VA. Through several step by step enzymatic reactions, we formulated a complete metabolic pathway and obtained 4VA eventually.
We decided to use nitrilase - a protein that degrades nitriles - for degradation of PAN.According to the literature, we selected nitrilase with high enzymatic activity and relatively complete sequences. Our effector system is construct on pET28-b plasmid and bind with upstream LacI sequence.
However, continuous high expression of nitrile hydrolase gene in engineering bacteria not only brings growth burden, but also is not economical, and there is also the risk of malignant mutation caused by excessive growth. Therefore, we looked for a broad-spectrum small molecule Sensor of aromatic compounds and tried to respond to PAN. To optimize the PAN degradation design of the second part of our project.
