Team:Virginia/Results







Home People Projects &raquo; Genetic Attenuators BioBrick Placeholders</a> BioPlastic</a> Adding to the RSBP</a> <img

src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/icons/parts.gif">BioBricks</a> <img

src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/icons/modeling.gif">Results</a> <img

src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/icons/notebook.gif">Notebook</a> <img class="logos"

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this.src='http://www2.clustrmaps.com/images/clustrmaps-back-soon.jpg';

document.getElementById('clustrMapsLink').href='http://www2.clustrmaps.com';" /></a> We'd like to thank our generous sponsors for making our work possible:  <img class="logos" src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/uva-logo-patch.png"

alt="University of Virginia" title="University of Virginia" /><img class="logos" src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/dupont.gif" alt="duPont"

title="duPont" />

Results <img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/vgem-results.JPG"> The 2008 VGEM Team has had a very productive summer. We've designed a new technical standard, BioBrick Placeholders, that should help synthetic biologists with the assembly of composite BioBrick parts. We've synthesized inefficient terminators to serve as Genetic Attenuators, which should be a useful gene expression tool in that it can help control mRNA transcript levels. We've codon-optimized and expressed parts that code for an enzymatic pathway that produces polyhydroxybutyrate, a bioplastic. We've contributed a handful of other useful new parts including two new reporters, orange fluorescent protein (OFP) and strongly enhanced blue fluorescent protein (SBFP2), and a streptomycin resistance gene. We are currently working on incorporating our Genetic Attenuators in our PHB pathway to synthesize bioplastic.

Genetic Attenuator <img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/vgem-measurement-plasmid.jpg" /> We have created a template plasmid</a> that can be used to characterize terminators for use as Genetic Attenuators. Derived from Caitlin Conboy's work</a> characterizing terminators in the registry. The plasmid has the benefit of being able to serve as a bi-functional measurement tool. Either one can measure fluorescence from reporter proteins it contains OR the plasmid can serve double-duty in a Real Time PCR</a> assay. Real Time PCR allows for much greater accuracy.

BioPlastic Making plastic a renewable resource. <img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/bp-sds-page-gel.jpg" /> SDS-PAGE result for enzymes in PHB synthesis pathway. From left to right: Marker, Control, PhaA</a>, PhaB1</a>, PhaC1</a> We have modeled the kinetics of of the PHB pathway to allow us to optimize when to harvest product from cultures synthesizing PHB. <img src="http://people.virginia.edu/~drt5p/VGEM/finalwiki/vgem-graph.jpg" />