Synthetic metabolic exchange for enhanced sustainability of agriculture

农业对维持人类生命和我们的文化至关重要，但目前它也是温室气体排放和环境污染的主要贡献者。为了提高农业的可持续性，该项目将探索绕过农业生态系统中自然分子交换的机会，并为营养物质的转移创造新的途径。为了应对这一挑战，我们建议设计，设计和评估合成代谢系统。学生将参与正在进行的创业活动，并学习掌握基于计算机和实用的合成生物学方法。为了实现逐步增加复杂性的合成代谢系统，该项目首先需要组装和验证所需的遗传部分集合。第一代组装系统一开始很少能很好地工作，因此，下一步将涉及对构建的代谢系统进行详细表征，然后进行系统优化。最后，目的是在重建的环境中评估组合的合成系统，目的是了解控制结果的原则。

Agriculture is critical for sustaining human life and our culture but presently it is also a major contributor towards both greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. With the aim of enhancing the sustainability of agriculture, this project will explore opportunities to by-pass the natural exchange of molecules within the agricultural ecosystem and create novel pathways for the transfer of nutrients.To address this challenge, we propose to design, engineer and evaluate synthetic metabolic systems. The student will engage with ongoing entrepreneurial activities and learn to master both computer-based and practical synthetic biology methods. In order to implement synthetic metabolic systems with step-wise increasing complexity, the project first needs to assemble and verify the needed collection of genetic parts. First generation assembled systems seldom work well at first, hence, the next step will involve detailed characterization of the constructed metabolic system, followed by systematic optimization. Finally, the aim is to evaluate the combined synthetic systems in a reconstructed environment, with the aim to understand the principles controlling the outcome.