<p>The Nitrogen Action Programme, introduced by the Dutch government in 2015, aimed to reduce nitrogen deposition, particularly in agriculture due to fertilizer use and ammonia emissions. However, in 2019, the Council of State deemed the programme <strong>insufficient</strong>, highlighting that nitrogen emissions were not just affecting rural ecosystems but also impacting urban development. As a result, new residential construction projects were halted until nitrogen emissions could be adequately compensated for, exacerbating the already critical housing shortage in the Netherlands <ahref="#cite1"style="color: #185A4F;">[1]</a>. This demonstrates how agricultural nitrogen management has far-reaching effects beyond the environment, directly influencing urban issues like the housing crisis, thereby emphasizing the urgency of addressing both challenges in tandem.</p>
<p>To combat global hunger and feed a growing population, an increase in global food production is crucial. This can be at least partially addressed through increasing crop yields, for which fertilizers are needed. Production of fertilizer is possible due to the Haber-Bosch process, where elemental nitrogen is converted into ammonia. <strong>Over-fertilization</strong> and its direct and indirect impact on the environment make agriculture the second leading contributor to short-term <strong>increases in global surface temperature</strong><ahref="#cite4"style="color: #185A4F;">[4]</a>.</p>
<p>We expected, as the results of the experiment, that the light emitted by the primitive lux operon was a very faint blue light (similar to a schematic diagram of PV), which is very technological, but far from being called "LAMPS". Our project first set out to make our enzymes emit brighter and more colorful light for practical applications. We use both <b>protein engineering</b> and <b>metabolic engineering</b> to achieve the design goal of <b>increasing light intensity</b>.</p>
<p>In 2022, Dutch agriculture lost 74% (312,000 tons) of the nitrogen it spread as manure and synthetic fertilizer to the air and soil. Synthetic fertilizer production alone is also the cause of nearly <strong>2% of global CO<sub>2</sub> emissions</strong><ahref="#cite5"style="color: #185A4F;">[5]</a>. In addition to <strong>water pollution</strong> by leakage of nitrate, <strong>air pollution</strong> due to the conversion of nitrates to N<sub>2</sub>O leads to a global greenhouse effect equivalent to 10% of that caused by the increase in atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub><ahref="#cite6"style="color: #185A4F;">[6]</a>. For staple crops like cereals and maize, <strong>up to 40% of a farm’s operating cost is spent purchasing fertilizer</strong><ahref="#cite4"style="color: #185A4F;">[4]</a>. Rising prices for fertilizer have been one of the problems leading to farmers' protests in Europe, and efforts to reduce nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands have been met with its own wave of protests <ahref="#cite7"style="color: #185A4F;">[7]</a>.</p>
<divclass="h1">Braarudosphaera bigelowii and UCYN-A omics analysis </div>
<p>UCYN-A is actively undergoing genome reduction as part of its evolution towards an organelle: the reason it cannot live independently is that essential proteins for its survival are no longer present in its genome, but are now encoded in B. bigelowii’s and then imported into UCYN-A.
Using recently released proteomics data on B. bigelowii and UCYN-A, along with older genomics and transcriptomics data, we have identified a putative list of proteins that are imported into the organelle. This data provides a solid foundation for further research into which proteins are essential, as we suspect many are redundant. Identifying a list of essential host-encoded proteins is crucial to successfully transplanting UCYN-A into a new host.
We have also created a new transcriptome assembly of B. bigelowii based on raw data from previous studies, using improved algorithms. This allowed us to create a new predicted proteome.
We are making all of our omics data available for future iGEM teams along with documentation. </p>
<p></p>Read more on our <ahref="https://2024.igem.wiki/tu-delft/results">results</a> page
