Revision as of 09:54, 18 October 2016

Omega-hexatoxin-hv1a

Introduction:

[[File:|Base_NCTU_FORMOSA_H1.png|800px|thumb|center|Figure 1.’’’Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a ]]

      This year we create a revolutionary system that integrates biological pesticides, an automatic detector, a sprinkler, and IoT. We made a database that contains most of the spider toxins and selected the target toxins by programming. Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a is coded for the venom of a spider, Hadronyche versuta.

Mechanism of Hv1a:

      According to the reference, Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a has a structure called ICK(inhibitor cysteine knot).^[1] This kind of structure contains three disulfide bonds and beta-sheet. With this structure, Hv1a can resist the high temperature, acid base solution and the digest juice of insect gut. Hv1a can bind on insect voltage-gated Calcium channels (CaV1) in the central nervous system, making it paralyze and die eventually.

Features of Hv1:

1. Non-toxic: Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a is non-toxic to mammals and Hymenoptera (bees). Since the structure of the target ion channel is different, omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a does not harm mammals and bees. So it is safe to use it as a biological pesticide.

2. Biodegradable: Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a is a polypeptide so it must degrade over time. After degradation, the toxin will become nutrition in the soil.

3. Species-specific: According to reference, Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a has specificity to Lepidopteran (moths), Dipteran (flies) and Orthopteran (grasshoppers).

4. Eco-friendly: Compare with chemical pesticides, Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a will not remain in soil and water so that it will not pollute the environment and won’t harm the ecosystem.

      Altogether, using Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a is totally an environmentally friendly way for solving harmful insect problems by using this ion channel inhibitor as a biological pesticide.

Target insect:

House cricket (Acheta domesticus) Musca domestica Amblyomma americanum Heliothis virescens

Experiment

1. Cloning :
After assembling the DNA sequences from the basic parts, we recombined Omega-hexatoxin-Hv1a gene to pSB1C3 backbones and conducted a PCR experiment to check the size of each part. The DNA sequence length of these parts is around 100-150 bp. In this PCR experiment, the toxin product's size should be near at 300-450 bp.

Figure 3.

2.Expressing:
E.coli(DE3) express the protein and form the disulfide in the cytoplasm. We sonicated the bacteria and purified the protein by 6xHis-tag behind the toxin using Nickel resin.

3. Analysis:
We do the Bradford analysis to get the protein concentration.

Figure 4.

Also, we do the UV test and model the degradation rate.

4.Modeling:
According to reference, the energy of Ultraviolet will break the disulfide bonds and the toxicity is also decreased. To take the parameter into consideration for our automatic system, we modeled the degradation rate of the protein and modified the program in our device.

2. Device:
We designed a device that contains detector, sprinkler, and integrated hardware with users by APP through IoT talk. We use an infrared detector to detect the number of the pest and predict what time to spray the farmland. Furthermore, other detectors like temperature, humidity, lamination, pressure of carbon dioxide and on also install in our device. At the same time, the APP would contact the users that all the information about the farmland and spray biological pesticides automatically. This device can make farmers control the farmland remotely.

Sequence and Features