Team:TU Munchen/Brainstorming

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We need to come up with some ideas for our project. It might help to look at some of the [http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/Presentations presentations from last year]. Some ideas have been posted at the [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:Idea_exchange iGEM idea exchange]. Also look at a list of the [http://openwetware.org/wiki/SynBERC:MIT/Calendar/2007-8-8 most wanted Biobrick parts].


Project Ideas

  • Antibody-production in E.coli
    • The Warsaw team is doing this [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:UW]. Could we do it differently?
  • Detoxification through E.coli (e.g. Mercury)
    • Great idea, but the MIT team did something like this in 2007 [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:MIT/2007]. Maybe we could take it farther? Or we could focus on another contaminant (not mercury).
    • The Edinburgh team designed a biosensor that detects arsenic in 2006 [http://parts.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/University_of_Edinburgh_2006]. It could be useful to read about their project.
  • Detection and removal of E. coli strains that cause illness, such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157:H7 E. coli. O157:H7].
  • Spider silk production in bacteria.
  • E.coli-Rugby
    • One group of E.coli expresses GFP if it reaches some kind of goal via chemotaxis (touchdown). Another group of E.coli uses chemotaxis to find the ones from group one and expresses CFP if it reaches them (block)
    • This is an interesting idea. Can you think of any practical applications?
    • With a few changes we would result in a modular E.coli: For example if you want to detect and react on some kind of substrate you could use one E.coli to find it (goal) and then the other one swimst to the first one and makes the reaction. You could expand this, for example if you want the same reaction on different substrates.You just have to build different searching E.colis (different substrates) but one reaction E.coli -> construction kit
  • E.Coli Filtering (like Detoxing), Codename: "Garbage Truck" :)
    • Goal would be a E.Coli which can:
    • 1.) detect concentration gradients of the product (I thought about Metal or bigger colloids)
    • 2.) swim (flagelli movement) towards it
    • 3.) incorporate these particle and thus lower the local concentration
    • 4.) goto 1.) till 3.) until the threshold of internal concentration of incorporated particles is reached
    • 5A.) aggregation of the "full" E.Coli to a big "clump" for easy extraction
    • 5B.) a chemical agent to extract the incorporated parts without killing the bacteria for repeated usage)
    • Another variant of this idea would be: After 4.) a chemical switch is activated and the E.Coli swims towards a certain "dump" area (like a garbage truck) and step 5B.) is activated. After that repeat 1.) to 5B.)
  • Improved chemotaxis
    • Chemotaxis in E. coli is essentially a random walk. Can we make it better?
    • This is related to problems in computer science and dynamical systems when one needs to find a path somewhere with limited or no memory.
    • Would be useful for any system where E. coli needs to get somewhere (e.g., E. coli rugby and E. coli filtering).
  • Acoustic activation: Up to now, chemical and light-driven activation are common. Could we implement a reaction to sound in E.coli?
    • probably by detecting the sound waves?
  • Measurement of E.coli density: despite the fact that you can easily measure the E.coli concentration via optical absorption, it might be useful to modify E.coli in such a way, that a certain signalling protein is expressed, once the E.coli reach a critical concentration.
  • E.coli sunscreen: Well, basically the idea behind this is: can we set the the amount of protein being expressed/RNA being transcribed via the intensity of light?
  • E.coli hard drive: Using a retro virus to write in E.coli: All bacteria produce inert fragments, which - after activation - are written into our plasmid.
    • Each coding bit would be seperated by a defined start/stop sequence.
    • To avoid bit doubling (instead of writing a 1 we write 11 or even 111), we also implement -stops-. Thus our sequence would be 1 -stop- 1 -stop- 00 -stop- etc.
  • E.coli nation: The team from Paris started last year to develop cell differentiation in E.coli. Perhaps we could further develop this concept.
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