Team:KUAS Korea/Sustainable

• KUAS_Korea
• Home
• Team
• Collaborations
  • Collaborations
  • Attributions
• Project
  • Description
  • Design
  • Experiments
  • Model
  • Engineering
  • Implementation
  • Contribution
• Human Practices
  • Human Practices
  • Communication
  • Sustainable

Sustainable Development Impact

This project aims to contribute to the conservation of vulnerable amphibian populations across the globe. Our system will aid to overcome the current difficulties faced in captive breeding and reintroduction efforts. If successful, the biodiversity of ecosystems would be restored. Our project put a great emphasis in promoting a greater biodiversity and preventing extinction of species.

Our project put a great emphasis in promoting a greater biodiversity and preventing extinction of species.

First, our inspiration for the project started off from reading a story of an anuran Panamanian golden frog (A.zeteki), which suffered from Bd outbreak. We tried to understand the current conservation effort plans on Atelopus species. Thus, we analyzed "Harlequin Toad (Atelopus) Conservation Action Plan (2021-2041)" in our Implementation page. Our critical analysis of the article helped us to identify the hurdles and suggest our system as a solution. We expect that our microbes would greatly expand the effectiveness of captive breeding and reintroduction.Implementation

Second, we interviewed with Edgardo Griffth who is the Director & Founder of EVACC foundation located in Panama. This open seminar was open for students of Korea university who are interested in the topic. We tried to provide an opportunity for students to listen to the story of the conservation efforts that was happening on the opposite side of the Earth. We could listen to the first hand experiences of the ecology of the toads. It was especially fascinating to hear about the amazing diversity of the tropics, since we Koreas never experienced the tropical climate. He also informed us EVACC's ultimate goal is to preserve nature through environmental education beyond the preservation of amphibians. Mr. Griffith's story at the frontline of conservation was inspiring for many of us.

Third, we also had an open Seminar with Prof. Matthew Fisher from Imperial College London. Prof. Matthew Fisher told us that he is conducting various research on the amphibian pathogen Bd. We could learn how genomic tool such as DNA barcodes, DNA seq, and RNA seq can help us to understand the pathogen. His emphasis on international collaboration when dealing with such an international issue was also inspiring. More on Human Practices

Lastly, we focused on raising awareness. As we have learned from the interview, global problems need global colloboraitive effort. If more people get interested in endangered species and collapsing ecosystems, there would be more support in looking for solutions and better solutions could emerge. For students at Korea university we distributed leaflet on the problem we are tackling. We have placed leaflet throughout the school so that it can be viewed by as many students as possible, and we have listed a way to contact KUAS so that many people can also reach us online and share messages. Also, for a wider public, we started posting on instgram and facebook on the topic, emphasizing the dangers of Bd and the importance of protecting amphibians. Also we introduced the conservation efforts of amphibians, and endangered amphibian species around the globe. More on Communication

We pursued sustainable development through above five methods. While referring to previous studies that carefully looked at the existing frog ecosystem, we held meetings with the EVACC Foundation, which is conducting deep research on conservation projects, and professor who is helpful in fungal pathogen(Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) data designated as our target. In addition, we thought that the interest of many people will help the progress of the study, and we have spared no passion for promoting our frog ecosystem conservation project. As a result, we found and modeled target layers and target substances of frog skin, and succeeded in genetically implementing them in E. coli, although partially. Through synthetic biological process, we contributed to sustainable development and conservation of ecosystem.

We hope our efforts could gain more attention so that amphibians can face a better future.

KUAS

Korea University

In-Geol Choi

South Korea

Tel: +82 10 3103 7332

Email: kuaskorea@gmail.com

Sponsor and Special thanks for

CSBL at Korea University

Sponsors