Template:BOKU-Vienna/Project

The overall idea

The goal of our project is to design a genetic mechanism, which enables us to switch any gene of interest ON or OFF using a signal molecule, just like you would switch ON or OFF a lightbulb. It would enable us to directly communicate and interact with an organism, making it controllable from the outside. The idea is to create a universal tool which can be used to toggle any desired combination of genes. It would be possible to combine several toggle switches and by this create a logical system reacting according to which signal or combination of signals is given to it. These signals can come from specific receptors, from genes which are toggled by external changes (drought, light, …) or from liposomes containing a specific guide RNA.

A lot of fields, such as agriculture or research could profit from such a system. For instance, if a researcher wants to study the different impacts a certain gene has on an organism, he/she can toggle the expression of the gene of interest with our system, and study the impacts or differences the expression of the gene has on the organism.

One of the many fields of applications for this toggle switch includes crops, which is especially important for austrian agriculture. Every year Austrian farmers suffer from huge harvest losses due to late frost, which kills the very fragile fruit blossoms. With ongoing change of climate and more extreme weather phenomenes, this will probably occur more frequently in coming decades. With our system it would be possible to use a specially designed OFF-signal molecule to tell a fruit tree not to bloom yet in times when frost is still likely to occur, just like you would switch OFF a lightbulb. Later on, an ON-signal molecule would be used to tell the tree to start blooming once the frost is gone. Thereby the harvest would be saved.

The possible application fields of our gene-toggling switch are countless and could be very useful for future generations of farmers, researchers, microbiologists to come.