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Team:Nevada/long term goals
From 2010.igem.org
- To promote the use of plant systems as biosensors.
- To promote public knowledge concerning genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
- To develop a library of plant-specific stress-inducible promoters for future iGEM competitions.
- To address logistical hurdles in utilizing various reporter genes in plant biosensor applications.
- Investigate potential plant systems for utilization in remote-sensing applications.
Demonstrating that plant systems can be used as biosensors is well and good, but several issues need to be addressed before implementation of plant biosensors can occur:
1. An energy/cost efficient infrastructure for the detection of reporter genes in crop plants must be developed. One of the main problems in using fluorescent proteins as reporters for plant biosensors arises due to autofluorescent properties present in compounds throughout plants cells. Chlorophyll fluorescence has already been used in previous studies to measure temperature stress in plants, so necessary filtering mechanisms must be implemented to discern differences between reporter fluorescence and the natural autofluorescent properties in plants (Chaerle et al.). Therefore, it may be prudent to look into reporter genes other than those that code for fluorescent proteins for implementation in plant biosensors.
