Team:Tokyo Tech

We want to make a Coli Touch!!

We try to construct a bacterial ‘touch panel’ which is colored by the pressure.To make a Coli Touch, we use input style of pressure.

To make a Coli Touch, we use input style of pressure.

Why pressure?

First, there were various ways as input. For example, small molecule, heat, and light were used until iGEM 2007. But no one used pressure as input.

So we use pressure sensitive parts. One paper says "One promoter is sensitive to pressure." cf.Takako Sato, Chiaki Kato,and Koki Horikoshi(1994) Effect of high pressure on gene expression by lac and tac promoters in Escherichia coli.Marine Biotechnology 3:89-92

We created pressurizing device for first step of creating touch display. This device has two holes (show figure). Each hole contains tubes and water. Inside tubes E. coli is cultivated. Pressure can travel to inside tubes. One hole (A) is covered with a block made of an acrylic glass. (show figure) Therefore the hole is not pressurized by water. The other (B) is covered with a plastic tape (show figure). Therefore the hole is pressurized.

In the stage of basic project, very high pressure (30MPa) is required for pressure induction of lac promoter. But lower pressure response is needed for creating touch display. Therefore we develop lower pressure inducible promoter. We performed random mutagenesis to lac promoter and tried to screen promoters with FACS.

A touch display are required a function of rewritable. Rewritable function consists of writable and erasable one. We adopted a genetic toggle switch that responds to pressure (show figure)