1) Dr.Ochiai

In thinking about applying our device to salt damage, we first had to know about what is salt damage. We asked Pr. Ochiai, who is familiar with a salt tolerance of plants, what is salt damage and what is the cause and effect of the problem.

・There are differences depending on the plant type, but general plants can grow up to 40 mmol. Some plants, such as an ice plant, can grow even in an environment where salt concentration exceeds 100 mmol.
・Other ions that affect physical and chemical properties of soil include calcium ions and sulfide ions.
・There are three major causes of salt damage. The first is salt accumulation in the soil surface layer due to capillary phenomena by irrigated agriculture. The second is salt accumulation in the lowland due to cultivation. The third is the invasion by storm surge or tsunami.
・In order to solve the problem of salt damage of plants, there are ways to exclude Na + and raise the osmotic pressure in the living body.

Opinion:　Until now, we were thinking that salt damage is an independent problem, but it turned out that it is necessary to consider various things in order to think about factors causing salt damage and solutions. This will be helpful for preparing salt - resistant yeast for this year’s project

↑Go to the Wiki Collaboration page of Team Botchan_Lab_Tokyo↑

2) Dr.Ishida

　By reading a literature and interviewing people studying in the lab, we were able to know enough fact about salt damage. However, in order for us to apply the device to the actual field, we also need to pay attention to local inputs of salt damage. This time, we asked Professor Ishida of the citizen environment research institute, who has been studying about desertification and salt damage of the Aral Sea for many years in order to hear the situation on-the-spot.

　・The Middle Eastern region is a salty damage-prone area.
　・Attempts to green the desert and salt damage areas have been made by planting Haloxylon which is tolerant of aridity and salt.
　・In the dry area, salt accumulates around 2 mm in the soil. This is blown off by the wind, causing children to become asthma, and agricultural land becomes damaged. Will it be possible to prevent this by growing salt-resistant plants?
　・In the Middle East region, they have pulled a lot of water from rivers to grow cotton in large quantities. For that reason, the river withered and the Aral Sea, which is also downstream, is drying up.

　From the story of Mr. Ishida, the salt damage was found to be a serious problem than we had thought until now. Especially, it was shocking to know that salt gives direct damage to human body. In addition, we found that many people are working hard on solving the problem of salt damage. I felt the necessity to aggressively communicate with these people and share information in order to impact the problem of salt damage.

3) 6th Asia Pasific conference

We went to Taiwan and attended the 6th Asia Conference. We were very inspired by the presentations and posters from teams all over Asia. Also, it was good practice for us our own presentation and poster. At the conference, other iGEMers gave us valuable advice on our projects which was very helpful. After the conference, we have continued to exchanged opinions through SNS.(picture)

4) Meetup with Gifu

We met up with Ryo Niwa, Leader of Team Gifu, who came to visit us in Kyoto. We discussed the current situation of Japanese iGEM teams and shared detailed progress of our projects. We discussed how to meet the criteria and gave advice to each other. In addition, we informed him about how we secured lab space and how we are conducting experiments. Ryo also advised us that an important point to make an iGEM project successful is to take in adequate food and sleep. There are very few teams in Japan, but we encouraged each other to do our best. It was a very unique and meaningful meetup.

Thank you, Team Gifu!!!

↑Go to the Wiki Collaboration page of Team Gifu↑

5) Providing Wiki Creation Assisting Software: KELN to other Teams

Based on last year's feedback, we improved our KELN software which automatically changes experiment notes to HTML-language and distributed it to Team Gifu and Team Botchan_Lab_Tokyo. The following is their feedback:

From Team Botchan_Lab_Tokyo
• ・It was easy to use even for people who are not computer-savy. So we could divide the work among many people.
• ・It was easy to customize the "KELN" software because the edit display is simple.
• ・Our experiment sample numbers was so many that we couldn’t write all sample data into a single cell.
• ・If we can use copy and paste in the software, we will complete the wiki more smoothly.
From Team Gifu
• ・ Without any special knowledge ,KELN can be used to get HTML code from a lab notebook, so we recommend this software to all iGEM teams!

We are very happy that KELN was helpful for you. All iGEMers can download KELN from here! All iGEMers can download KELN from here!