Arabidopsis is a model organism and common plant utilized in lab for testing proof-of-concept. It is affectionately labeled the “lab rat” of plant synthetic biology. We chose this due to its short life cycle and rapid seeding, which best suits our project design needs. Given the nature of our project involves testing many different prospective constructs plugged into our template, Arabidopsis is the perfect organism for us to use to ensure our construct is effective before moving onto the soybean itself.
The soybean is a major crop on a widespread global level. It has been studied and its genome is well known and mapped. Agrobacterium transformations of the soybean have been successful in numerous former experiments. Soybeans are naturally nitrogen-fixing, making it a well-founded, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly crop to produce in terms of scale-up. Engineering soybeans for long-term sustainability is ideal given their high oil and protein content, as these features allow for higher calorie content. Having a crop that is both nutritious and calorie-sufficient allows for guaranteed nutrition per calorie, rather than providing solely calorie content without nutritional value. Being able to engineer soybeans that attain this nutritional enhancement, a property that is hereditary and is transmitted by proliferation, allows for a groundbreaking force in fighting hidden hunger.