Atipat Patharagulpong, a third year biochemist and a NANOTEC scholar at Imperial College is a member of the Imperial College London iGEM team “Project AuxIn: engineering bacteria to help fight soil erosion” that won the 1st Runner Up prize for the World Championship Jamboree at iGEM 2011 which was held during November 5-7 at MIT, Cambridge, MA.
“Soil erosion is a massive problem world wide and is often the root cause of desertification” said Atipat. “Under the project AuxIn, we hope to engineer bacteria to accelerate plant root development via a 3 phase modules: Phyto-Route, Auxin Xpress, and Gene Guard. The modules will follow the synthetic biology engineering cycle”.
The team collaborated with the WITS-CSIR team from South Africa. An in-dept details report on this research can be reviewed in http://2011.igem.org/team:imperial_college_london (Human Practice).
Atipat received the NANOTEC Scholarship in 2006. He hopes to continue his studies and receive his PhD in Genomics/Nanobiotechnology in 2016. Atipat will join the NANOTEC research team after receiving his PhD.
