A majority of iGem work is done running experiments with trial after trial in the lab and exploring what works and doesn’t work from those trials. The experimentation is the foundation, but the heart of our team lies with our community. Last year, our Milwaukee team focused on communication with local farmers to see how our project could help with their soil needs. We continued on with our goal by further developing our sensor.
The main objective of our project was to create an affordable method of finding the concentration of bioavailable phosphate in a soil sample using promoters controlling the expression of Beta-lactamase. To make the sampling process efficient, we referred to the interviews of local farmers and their current soil testing procedures.