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Revision as of 20:23, 21 September 2011

Module 2: Auxin Xpress

Auxin, or Indole 3-acetic acid (IAA), is a plant growth hormone which is produced by several soil bacteria. We have taken the genes encoding the IAA-producing pathway from Pseudomonas savastanoi and expressed them in Escherichia coli. Following chemotaxis towards the roots and uptake by the Phyto Route module, IAA expression will promote root growth with the aim of improving soil stability.

Future Work

To carry on the work on the Auxin-Xpress module, there are a number of steps we would take in the immediate future and others that form part of our long term plan.

Short-term plans

1. How much auxin we are producing - hopefully we will know from HPLC.

Explanation

2. How much auxin we want to produce for optimal root growth - from modelling.

3. Construct we would build to achieve the above.

4. Continuation of soil experiments.

5. Continuing the soil erosion experiment.

6. Exposing plants to our auxin-producing bacteria for a prolonged period of time and observing changes in dry-mass, root length and root branching compared to a control that has been exposed to E. coli not producing auxin.

7. Photoconvert Dendra2 in bacterial cells that have been taken up into plant roots and image the same cells at set time intervals to assess whether the cells are metabolically active

Long-term plans

1. Plan

2. Plan

3. Testing and implementation in the field.