Contribution

Biological innovations

Our team developed an innovative technique for ensuring plants have an increased drought resistance. Our technique incorporates already-existing seed coating technology with genetically modified rhizo bacteria (bacteria already present in the root area of canola) to create an innovative and cost effective solution. Our system will allow the plant to silence a gene (bHLH61) that is shown to increase drought sensitivity in plants, but only during periods of high temperature, when the plant is losing a considerable amount of water. During periods of normal conditions, the gene silencing will not occur. What makes our technique innovative is not only the cost effectiveness (allowing farmers to water their crops less and prevent loss of crops due to drought), but mainly the temperature-activated gene silencing. This allows for a low-maintenance solution to a very costly and time consuming issue, and one that will only continue to affect more and more farmers each year.

iGEM Parts

Our team wanted to knockdown bHLH61 and RFP in Arabidopsis and canola. We designed oligos that teams can use for siRNA knockdown of bHlH61 or RFP.

Community outreach

We organized several events in our community to promote public education and outreach, and numerous events were conducted in cooperation with the collegiate iGEM team at the University of Lethbridge. Examples of outreach events include:

• Weekly children’s science lessons for summer camps (in cooperation with the local YMCA)
• An "education booth” at the local Lethbridge Farmer’s Market, which allowed us to engage with the public and speak to a target audience of farmers and individuals involved in the agricultural industry.
• “Education booth” at a local carnival, known as “Whoop Up Days”. We were able to engage with numerous individuals from the community to answer questions and spread awareness about iGEM and our project.
• We interviewed a local canola farmer, Christine McKee, which not only helped our project, but also helped foster a connection between bio researchers and farmers.
• Etc.

Peer-Reviewed Paper for Synthetic Biology Paper, BioTreks

Our team wrote a paper for Biotreks, an international peer-reviewed synthetic biology journal, authored by high school students. Our paper, which will be published on October 27, 2025, presents an overview of our technique, approach, and solution. It contributes to knowledge being developed in our area of research, and has allowed us to cooperate with other researchers from around the globe to improve our approach and refine our solution.

Mindfuel Tech Futures Challenge 2025

Our team competed in a regional STEM innovation competition, called the Tech Futures Challenge, which encourages students to develop STEM solutions to real-world sustainability problems (MindFuel.ca/tfc/). Our participation in the 2025 Tech Futures Challenge earned us the Biggest Project Pivot/Improvement award and aided us in further improving and developing our project. This competition not only allowed us to develop our project through feedback, but through developmental workshops we attended, we were able to improve our dry and wet lab skills, coding skills, and helped us improve our approach and methodology for our iGEM project. Our participation in the TFC also allowed us to meet and discuss with other iGEM teams participating (including collegiate teams), and to help spread awareness about the field of synthetic biology.