Team:Yonsei Korea/Description

IGEM_YONSEI

Introducing:

PathoSense

The revolutionary technology utilizing a nanobiosensor to detect inconspicuous pathogens

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The period 1950 – 1960 saw a new era of the green revolution cement its place on the global production stage. In this era, fresh food such as "Oryza sativa," today known as rice, emerged as an essential, social, cultural, and political commodity. Predominantly, the plant was grown in most Asian countries; however, it has become the most consumed, produced, and widely cultivated food crop across the globe.

Today, with a threefold increase, from 221 – 745 million tons from 1960 to 2018, rice has become more than a food crop. With over 144 million farms cultivating this plant in 2018 and 90% of its producers emerging from Asia, it has transformed societies, economies, and human welfare. Rice production in Asian countries like our nation (South Korea) has provided food for millions, reduced poverty and hunger, and improved livelihoods.

    In this regard, rice finds itself a highly protected commodity facing an increasing demand worldwide due to increasing population, climate change, and diet diversification. However, like many others today, this food crop faces significant challenges that threaten the future of its production. Climate change, natural hazards, low income in agriculture, and labor scarcity have become a pandemic for many large producers.

    Case in point, in South Korea, we found that the aging of farmers, feminization of farming, and urbanization have significantly impacted the production of rice on a national scale. This issue was so much that 2020 saw Korean rice consumption fall to 57.5 kilograms per capita (statista.com, 2021). To this end, the Korean Ministry of Agriculture started to subsidize the plant's production; however, a deeper conversation with farmers also reveals that these are mere surface issues to the alarming decrease of rice production. A greater environmental risk poses a danger to this shortage: in the form of (Magnaporthe oryzae) rice blast. As noted, our team sought to study the Magnaporthe oryzae: a fungus that causes rice blast and has increasingly affected rice plants leading to approximately 30% of rice production losses globally and 15 - 60 % annual incidents in Korea.

    To this end, a new challenge arose. We asked ourselves, "what could we do in our capacity to mitigate this growing issue within our nation and the globe at large?" and as aspiring scientists, the immediate response was to delve into more research, develop and disseminate innovative technologies, and practices to overcome this issue. Many scientists had also taken this direction of thought, implementing new technologies to mitigate this risk through rapid detections; however, they are skill extensive or show late diagnosis. This shortcoming was realized when Covid-19 self-tests and precision medical tests were the heat of media and benchtop research finally making its way into society. In conjunction with some of our members' background knowledge of nano biomedical applications in precision sensors, we sought to develop a novel detection system.

Our nanobio detection system would allow farmers to quickly test their rice plants for signs of infection before lesion visibility. When the characteristic lesions have appeared on the rice plant, the fungus has already reproduced and spread its spores. After identifying and isolating the genetic material associated with the rice blast pathogen, we plan to develop a detection technology by achieving DNA cleavage through DNAzymes. A simple Magnaporthe oryzae gene complementary sequence modified onto gold nanoparticle sensors would be applied for a conjugation test with extracted pathogen DNA samples. The DNA would bind to our DNA modified gold nanoparticles and provide visual feedback that is easy to use for any rice farmer to identify.

While this may have been a dream for us, in times where we Covid -19 was on a rampage, we were inspired to make a difference in our community. As individuals, we sought to rise above circumstances, create opportunity, and strive to make our mark on the world. Our goals were to fully grasp the scope of the problem the Korean farmers were experiencing with this fungus and curate a research protocol that would allow us to model a sensor system, Pathosense®, that can be scaled for industrial application through further research. With limited resources, we established the prevalence of rice blast in South Korea; after that, synthetic DNA modifications coupled with a nanoparticle synthesis employed a sensing model. We believe this will lay the ground for the development of a cheap, easy to use, and effective early detection system for the Magnaporthe oryzae fungus.

REFERENCES

YONSEI_KOREA 2021

Yonsei_Korea is a convergent team of students based in Seoul, South Korea striving to create meaningful change utilizing synthtic biology in the iGEM 2021 Competition.