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

氨是一种腐蚀性强刺激性气体，会引起几个健康和环境问题。氨的排放在农业实践中尤其成问题，农业占英国氨排放总量的88%。牲畜舍是氨生产的主要贡献者，在这里，除了农场工人的安全外，排放还可能对动物的福利和生产力造成严重后果。家禽对氨排放的贡献仅次于牛(DEFRA，2020)，禽舍中过高的氨水平使禽类更容易受到细菌感染，并对农民造成经济损害。这些排放对环境的影响在家禽生产密集型地区，如怀伊谷，尤其有害。在这里，河流生态系统正在被摧毁，因为氨导致富营养化；由于农田径流导致藻类大量繁殖，水体中的营养物质过度丰富；食物蛋白质的消化导致尿酸和尿素在凋落物中排泄。在有利的条件下，环境中的微生物产生的酶负责将这些转化为氨。目前控制氨排放的战略非常侧重于提供减缓氨产生速度的环境条件；或者涉及使用苛刻的化学品来补救或抑制导致氨产生的酶的活性。然而，这些策略都不能解决问题的根源：生产促进氨生产的微生物酶。福里姆科学公司开发了一系列友好的益生菌，用作饲料添加剂或环境净化，可以准确有效地减少特定细菌酶的产生。这些益生菌包含自然产生的元素，使它们能够部署细菌的免疫系统，称为CRISPR-Cas，专门针对DNA中负责产生氨酶的区域。拟议中的项目将允许Folium开发这项技术，以便它能够处理农场环境中可能发现的各种产氨酶，并确保该技术的成功从实验室转化到农场。Folium Science非常熟悉家禽行业产品的开发，希望该项目的成功能够在未来解决其他农业实践中的氨生产问题。

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.