For this project we were given the task of solving a world problem through biotechnology. My group and I decided to focus on deforestation. This is and has been an issue for a while, not only contributing to global warming, but destroying ecosystems and habitats for the animals that live in them. We focused further into the tropical rain forests of Brazil, since it contains 61% of the amazon rain forest. Currently, Brazil is the second largest producer of soybeans in the world, and this is heavily contributing to the cutting down of trees in Brazil. Cattle feed is in high demand and 80% of the soybean plants grown in Brazil are destined for cattle farms. Therefore what is happening is soybean farmers are coming in and taking over cattle pastures to grow their crops, and then the cattle farmers are going and cutting down more trees to create more pastures. To solve this problem and reduce the amount of trees being cut down, we thought up the idea of genetically modifying the soybean plants to be bigger and thus more filling. We would do this through going in and reversing the Iaglu gene that controls the growth hormone. The more of the Iaglu gene the plant has, the more its growth is suppressed, so by reversing this gene we would in turn stop the Iaglu from suppressing the plants growth. This would enable the plant to be bigger. In the end our hope is that the genetically modified soybean will be bigger, more filling and thus the need to create more fields for cultivating soybeans will lower or possibly stop all together. That in turn would lead to less deforestation in Brazil.
Concepts :
- Biotechnology : the exploitation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes
- Deforestation : the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non-forest use
- our problem
- GMO : A GMO is an organism whose genome has been altered by the techniques of genetic engineering so that its DNA contains one or more genes not normally found there.
- How we are altering the Soybeans
- Iaglu : The first gene for controlling the growth hormone to be cloned from a plant
- The gene we are reversing to make our soybeans larger
- Particle Bombardment : A Biolistic technology that is a direct physical method of introducing nucleic acids into cells
- How we are going to insert the new Iaglu gene into our soybeans
Reflection :
This was a very fun and interesting project. I learned more in depth about GMOs and how they are actually done as well as how big of an effect crops and domestic animals have on deforestation, etc. I thought I took a very good leadership role this project by helping sort who was doing what and making sure everyone had something to do. I also felt I worked very hard on this project and really contributed a lot. However there still was times when I was off task a little bit here and there since this project was so long. That is something I know I can always improve upon. An overall pit of this project was our original idea of creating a soil to help stop deforestation was nicely shut down by our mentor Bruce Blumberg, a professor at UCI. However we were able to bounce back from this, and think up a whole new idea which I think was one of our biggest peaks. I learned during this project how important it is for every one in the group to contribute, and put in the same amount of effort towards the project. Overall the project turned out great and I think our idea could possibly put us one small step closer to solving deforestation.