Team:Kyoto/Human Practices
As a project in 2018, iGEM Kyoto worked on the creation of salt-absorbing yeast. In most cases, the function of biomolecules is greatly affected by the salt concentration in solution. In order to avoid situations where synthetic biological devices created to work in various environments are inhibited at high salt concentration, our device aims to adjust the salt concentration of the culture solution.
In order to consider where our device can practically be used, we studied various examples of synthetic biological devices and asked the experts about many social problems caused by salt concentration. The salt damage problem shown below is particularly serious among salt related social problems. How our device can contribute to Salt Damage and what kind of function is expected in our device? To search these answers, we not only asked experts in Salt Damage but also set up opportunities to listen to the public who are unfamiliar with synthetic biology.
Among these opportunities, we noticed that cognition about synthetic biology is much lower than we imagined in Japanese society. Furthermore, most people did not know about the activities of iGEM. Many synthetic biological devices, including ours, are created every day to solve all possible social problems. We believe that in order for these devices to be used in the actual field, not only special experts but also general public need to have an understanding of synthetic biology. Therefore, in the following events, we advertised on synthetic biology and iGEM and worked on improving cognition about these activities in Japanese society.
As we showed in this result, salt concentration has a great influence on protein-protein interaction. Besides, the behavior of various biomolecules is greatly influenced by salt concentration. Rather than solving this device in the test tube alone, is there any possibility of expanding the application to solve something more social? While exploring this question, we encountered a serious problem caused by high salt concentration, it is salt damage.
Salt damage is a phenomenon that the growth of crops is inhibited by salt accumulation in the soil. Since plants do not require salt for growth, excess salts in the soil become growth inhibiting substances. For example, high concentrations of sodium ions in the soil cause osmotic pressure to increase and inhibit the ability to suck up water, soils lose their water holding capacity, and enzyme reactions in plant bodies are inhibited.
Salt damage is occurring in one-fifth of the world's agricultural land. Is it possible that our device will contribute even a bit to this problem? We searched for an expert on salt damage and explored the possibility to find an answer to this question.
If we study synthetic biology, we often spend much time inside the lab. So, we tend to consider just biological aspects of GMOs or ease in handling them in the laboratory. However, in order to make use of synthetic biology, it is necessary to embrace ideas of public people and people of various fields. Fortunately, we were able to get many opportunities to interact with a wide range of people from junior high school students to university professors, Such opportunities made us notice new issues and applications of our project. I'm sure that our project would be more disgusting unless we met them.
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https://2018.igem.org/Team:Kyoto/ExpertInterview