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What is Star-Chlamy?
"Starchlamy can be understood as "A superstar in future agriculture" and "Starch(Ch)lamy".
We modified theseChlamydomonas reinhardtii strains to realize the potential to produce starch efficiently in syhthetic plant without taking up much land.
Land-Consuming Food Production:
as we know it
Up to today, the most common agricultural paradigm is still highly dependent on land. According to FAO, over 95% of world crop production comes from land. The plough supports every harvest with its nutration and fertileness.
However, at the same time, high dependency means the same threat will come to food production as to the arable land.
It is necessary that we must be visionary enough to cultivate the possibility of land-free agriculture to reduce the dependence.
The Global Arable Land Crisis
What's worse, due to natural hazards such as desertification, salinization, and soil erosion, a large amount of arable land loses its productivity every year around the world, and that strengthen the necessity mentioned above.
Although arable land is constantly decreasing, the rate of global population growth is accelerating, and the demand for food is constantly rising. Against this backdrop, the food crisis is spreading everywhere.
It is urgent to solve the global arable land crisis.
Which Crop to Target?
After detailed researching, we decided to choose starch as a target to design the land-free agriculture paradigm.
The reasons are as follows:
- Starch distributes really widely in the nature, mainly in cereals.
In fact, it is one of the crops with the most abundant production globally. - Starch has high food and industrial value and modifying starch products in amylose content, which has something similar to the core idea of synthetic biology, does has a growth market.
- It's easy to find chassis organism that produces starch themselves, which simplify the modification.
Showed on the right is a prechart describing how much each type of crops takes in all the crop production worldwide every year (Item: billion ton).
Data Source: STATISTICAL YEARBOOK 2022 ISSN 2225-7373 WORLD FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Our Design
"Star-Chlamy"
We modify Chlamydomonas reinhardtii starch synthesis pathway
for higher starch synthesis and
manageable amylose content.
Besides, we try to crack the main barrier for its industrial production, which lies in its CCM and light capture in photosynthesis.
Starch Pathway
Amount and "Amylose Flexibility"
- "Broaden the source of income and economize on expenditure": Introduce a more efficient AGPase and knock outthe key enzyme genes in the starch decomposition pathway.
- Knocked out the key enzyme genes responsible for the conversion of amylose to amylopectin to increase the proportion of amylose in starch
- Establish a reliable method for detecting starch content in Chlamy.
Chlorophyll F
What if Chlamy can make use of FaRLiP?
- Chlamydomonas only usesnear-red light but not far-red light . The near-red light attenuation in the depth of runway ponds becomes a serious problem.
- We expressed a chlorophyll F synthetic enzyme from cyanobacteria to introduce FaRLiP-absorbing chlorophyll F into Chlamydomonas, hoping to extend its light harvesting spectrum.
Carbon Concentration Mechanism (CCM)
Wake Chlamy up in high CO2 concentration
Target: Overexpressing major transcription factor CIA5
CIA5 undergoes chemical modification under and only under low carbon dioxide concentrations.
Thereby activating its transcriptional activity and up regulating the expression of over 90% of CCM-related genes.
Wet lab
Have a look at what we have achieved towards the realization of Chlamydomonas photosynthetic factory!
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Dry Lab
We are dedicated to screening better promoters for our hard-to-serve chassis organism and to predicting the percentage of different starch synthesized in metabolic pathway.
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Implementation
We survey the possibility of our strains to be applied in real factory cultivation of Chlamy and to what degree will they make a difference to starch production efficiency.
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Sustainable Development
See the context of our creative solution to arable land crisis and how this SDG-associated idea has been well received and advised by expertise and out fellows.
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Our Team
We named ourselves as "Ten Chlamies" when
iGEM season 2023 began and we have grown with our real Star-Chalmy!
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