UAlberta iGEM: Brittany

It's no secret that the agriculture community sprays various chemicals on their crops to avoid pests, weeds, and other insects. But, to what extent do these sprays actually help the crops? And do they damage other organisms around them? With more companies spraying crops despite the protest of the anti-GMO communities and others, how can we know what is or is not safe to consume? What is or is not safe for our environment? And, what is safe for our lovely bees?

Welcome to Ted Talk 2.0 brought to you by Brittany Sauter. On this rollercoaster ride, we will be talking about spraying our crops with pesticides and its various forms of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and any other -cides out there.

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Insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides all get their names from what they kill and fall under the overall category of pesticides (1). The ending of all these, -cide, means "killer" or "act of killing", and the word at the beginning is what it kills (2). These chemicals do attempt to kill, but they also can be a massive stressor for various other plants and animals that they don't mean to kill. In my previous blog post, I discussed pollination and bees, and how spraying our crops causes stress for the bees and kills them if they are sick, as various chemicals are used in different categories of pesticide sprays, making them affect more than just the target pest of interest. And to make matters worse, not only are there various chemicals used in sprays, but they also have different effects when mixed with other chemicals. This all happens without us fully understanding all the effects those chemicals will have on nature. The only goal of pesticides is to kill various pests and stop the destruction of agriculture crops and dandelions from entering perfectly groomed lawns (1).

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Even though pesticides have been around for a long time, the first chemical synthesis was done to create dichlorophenyltrichloroethane, or most popularly known as DDT (2). DDT was first synthesized in 1874 but was known to have insecticide benefits until 1939 (2). The man who discovered the insecticide usage of DDT even got awarded the Nobel prize in 1948 in Medicine and Physiology due to saving humans from malaria and typhus (1). Little did we all know, the damage that DDT would do to the environment to get it banned internationally in 2001 (3). DDT was banned based on several factors: environmental impact, cancerous properties, and the way it breaks down leaves lasting effects for future generations (3). Even though DDT has been banned, spraying our crops has become normalized. Most of us driving through suburbia or by agriculture areas can see trucks spraying crops, trees, or even people's lawns. Spraying lands is usually done for different reasons but the main purpose is to get rid of unwanted pests that can be actually beneficial to various ecosystem developments. Why though do we spray our crops with various pesticides when we do not know their lasting effects on both humans and the environment?

There have been so many chemicals banned from being used in pesticides and also pesticides that have been banned overall; however, this changes from country to country. Certain countries are more cut-throat about what chemicals can be used, whereas other countries let anything occur. Even chemicals that have been on the market for a while are now being discovered to have long-lasting health effects as a carcinogen and environmental effects, such as glyphophosphate (4). Glyphophosphate was first synthesized in 1950 and was found to have herbicide properties in 1970 and now is being discussed as a potential toxic to human health and the environment (4).

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Spraying our crops with these chemicals may help our crops grow potentially, but they cause a lot more harm too. They damage the environment, which in turn affects the animal's health in that ecosystem (20> When crops are sprayed, animals interact with that environment, whether it is passing through or stopping and grazing the sprays interact with them. Also, these chemicals can last in the environment for generations verifying that even if we stop spraying chemicals on crops the lasting effects are still here (3).

I do not know if all pesticides are bad; however, it is bad to remove vital organisms from an ecosystem due to what we as humans label as "pests." Some plants, organisms, bugs, and other animals play vital roles in not only pollination but also maintaining soil health and biodiversity of an area. It is each organism's job in an ecosystem to find a niche and occupy it as long as possible to stay alive. This is what the "pests" are doing.

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Thank you for joining another Ted Talk brought to you by Brittany Sauter. This rollercoaster has finally come to an end; thanks for reading about how spraying our crops damages parts of our vital environment.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#International_usage_restrictions
2. https://www.britannica.com/technology/agrochemical
3. http://www.panna.org/resources/ddt-story
4. https://survivorstable.com/2018/06/05/why-is-a-4-decade-old-pesticide-back-in-the-news-the-story-of-glyphosate/

- B. A. Sauter

UAlberta iGEM

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When I first started iGEM I thought that the bees' only purpose was to strike fear into the heart of all humans and stab us with their butt swords. I have since learned that they are an important link in the agricultural industry by: giving us honey, beeswax, and feeding us. They help feed us through pollinating other plants, spreading seeds across fields, and helping our plants survive. For such a small little guy, they really do so much for us and are completely disregarded in that. So welcome to the Ted Talk of Brittany Sauter as I embark upon telling you about how amazing and incredible these little critters are — while I try not to panic due to my huge phobia of bees.

Pollination is not an abstract topic to us. Just recently, when visiting St. Luke's Catholic School, the grade 4 class was talking about pollination, plants, and of course the bee. The bee, in all its majestic form, goes to the plant to collect nectar and, just by chance in the process of getting that nectar, it gets pollen (the seed) on its hind legs (1). Since the bee is a hungry guy, it wants more nectar but not from the same plant. So, it flies away to a new plant to get nectar. In that process of leaving the first plant, flying around randomly, landing on the second plant and getting more nectar; it has pollinated (1). Which is pretty cool, if you ask me!

This entire process of the plant and the bee working together is called co-evolution, which is pretty common. Co-evolution is when two or more species affect each other's evolution, either aiding it or negatively affecting it. In this case, the bees' and flowers' relationship serves as an example of positive co-evolution (2). Now you might be wondering, "How did they co-evolve?" It's simply done by a series of adaptations and specializations. It is a constant rotation between flowers adapting to bees and bees adapting to flowers, which is something that even Darwin noticed. It turns out bees are attracted to plants with bilateral symmetry, the colours blue and yellow, and at manipulating flower parts. Since the plant wants to be pollinated by bees, the plant has selective pressures to favour those adaptations. Flowers influence bees by wanting them to have hairy back legs, a specific body type, and effective pollination. In turn, the bee also has selective pressures favouring those adaptations. This is a cycle, with the two constantly influencing each other to be preferred (3).

Honey bees are quite adaptive since they are able to collect pollen from multiple plants and most of their life is spent collecting pollen, making them super important guys (4). This beneficial relationship between bees and flowers feeds us so without them, life would be not so gouda.

I know right? Pollination is awesome. These two have basically evolved together to feed themselves, help the plant, and we take that to our advantage. So besides bees, what are other ways that pollination happens? Pollination is the act of pollen being moved from the male part (the anther) to the female part (the stigma) of the plant. In summary, pollination is the act of making the next generation of plants; however, the seeds that go to the stigma must be that of the same species. How pollen moves is by a vector, or pollinators, the most common being bees. Other vectors include the wind, water, birds, various insects, bats, and other animals that even graze by flowers. Using pollinators is a method called cross-pollination; however, there is another type called self-pollination where the plant just fertilizes itself (5).

So then, why are bees going extinct if they are co-evolving with plants and helping each other? The answers to that are simple: climate change, insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides. Since these are constantly being sprayed on our agriculture plants, they are affecting the bees' stress levels. Moreover, if one type of pollinator is stressed, the other pollinators could also be affected.

You are probably thinking, "Well maybe only spray the crops with herbicides since the bees are not a plant?" However, the answer isn't that simple. Our research is dealing with an intraparasite called Nosema ceranae and if the bee has an overly high level of this intraparasite and then comes into contact with areas sprayed with herbicides, the herbicides make the bees more susceptible to these toxins and eventually kill them. If you spray the area with insecticides, this will most certainly damage the bees since they are an insect and pesticides harm them (6).

This figure shows the percent of bees dying with either spraying the crops with 0.1% (the recommended amount) of a surfactant called "Boost" or 0.01% of it. Surfactants are chemicals used in herbicides, insecticides, and fungicide sprays (7). If the same chemicals are being used in both herbicides and insecticides then we can't only use herbicides. Like I said above, the answer is not that simple... or is it? We could just stop spraying our crops with damaging chemicals that affect not only the pollinators, wildlife, but also people who are spraying the chemicals on these crops. But that is probably another Brittany Sauter "Ted Talk" to look at in the future.

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So there we have it folks, the Brittany Sauter "Ted Talk" on pollination and the bees. We have officially come full circle on how not only bees and plants have co-evolved, but also what is affecting the bees in their efforts to pollinate and influences on them. I hope this was informative to us all and that you look forward to our future blog postings.

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