Guided Biotics® for the targeted reduction of ammonia production in agricultural practices

氨是一种腐蚀性、高度刺激性的气体，会引起一些健康和环境问题。氨的排放在农业实践中特别成问题，占英国氨排放总量的88%。畜牧场是氨生产的主要贡献者，正是在这里，排放物除了对农场工人的安全外，还可能对动物的福利和生产力产生严重后果。家禽对氨排放的贡献仅次于牛（DEFRA，2020），家禽饲养中氨水平过高使家禽更容易受到细菌感染，对农民造成经济损失。这些排放物对环境的影响在家禽密集生产地区，如怀伊谷，特别有害。在这里，河流生态系统正在被破坏，因为氨导致富营养化;由于农田径流导致藻类大量繁殖，水体中营养物质过多。消化膳食蛋白质导致尿酸和尿素在垃圾中排泄。在有利的条件下，由环境中的微生物产生的酶负责将这些转化为氨。目前用于控制氨排放的策略非常集中于提供减缓氨产生速率的环境条件;或涉及使用刺激性化学品来补救或抑制导致氨产生的酶的活性。然而，这些策略都没有解决问题的根源：促进氨产生的微生物酶的产生。FOLIUM Science开发了一系列友好的益生菌，可用作饲料添加剂或环境清洁剂，可以精确有效地减少特定细菌酶的产生。这些益生菌含有天然存在的元素，使它们能够部署细菌的免疫系统，称为CRISPR-Cas，专门针对负责产生氨生成酶的DNA区域。拟议的项目将允许FOLIUM开发这项技术，以便它可以解决可能在农场环境中发现的各种产氨酶，并确保该技术的成功从实验室转化为农场。FOLIUM Science精通家禽业产品的开发，希望该项目的成功可以在未来适用于解决其他农业实践中的氨生产。

Ammonia is a caustic, highly irritating gas that poses several health and environmental concerns. Emissions of ammonia are particularly problematic in agricultural practices, which account for 88% of the UK's total ammonia emissions. Livestock housing is the main contributor to ammonia production, and it is here where the emissions can have severe consequences on the welfare and productivity of the animals, in addition to the safety of farm workers. Poultry are second only behind cattle in their contribution to ammonia emissions (DEFRA, 2020), and excessive ammonia levels in poultry housing renders the birds more susceptible to bacterial infections and is economically damaging for the farmer. The environmental impact of these emissions is especially harmful in areas of intensive poultry production, such as the Wye Valley. Here, river ecosystems are being decimated because ammonia leads to eutrophication; an excessive richness of nutrients in water bodies due to run-off from the farmland that gives rise to algal blooms.Digestion of dietary protein results in the excretion of uric acid and urea in the litter. Under favourable conditions, enzymes produced by microorganisms in the environment are then responsible for converting these into ammonia. Current strategies for controlling ammonia emissions are very much focussed on providing environmental conditions that slow the rate of ammonia generation; or involve the use of harsh chemicals to remediate or inhibit the activity of the enzymes that result in ammonia production. However, none of these strategies deal with the root source of the problem: production of the microbial enzymes that facilitate ammonia production.FOLIUM Science has developed a range of friendly, probiotic bacteria for use as a feed additive or environmental cleanup that can precisely and efficaciously reduce the production of specific bacterial enzymes. These probiotics contain naturally occurring elements that allow them to deploy the immune system of bacteria, called CRISPR-Cas, to specifically target regions of DNA that are responsible for the production of ammonia-generating enzymes. The proposed project will allow FOLIUM to develop this technology so that it can tackle the broad range of ammonia-producing enzymes likely to be found in the farm environment, and to ensure that the success of the technology translates from the lab to the farm. FOLIUM Science is well versed with development of products for the poultry sector and it is hoped that the successes of this project could be adapted to tackle ammonia production in other agricultural practices in the future.