abstract

Our aim in creating the iGarden was to create a framework for plant engineering following the BioBrick standard. We began by modifying a set of vectors designed to facilitate agrobacterium-mediated transformation to be compatible with the BioBrick standard, and creating a collection of constructs to be expressed in plants - such as flavor elements, allergen knockdown, pigment accumulation, and containment mechanisms. We built all constructs in E. coli, and once complete, cloned them into the BioBrick agrobacterium vectors. We then transformed agrobacteria with our constructs via electroporation, and subsequently transformed Arabidopsis seeds by dipping flowers into the transgenic agrobacteria. In our final step, we harvested the transformed seeds and screened them for our designed constructs using antibiotic selection.