Developed a brand new instrument: LCC (Liquid Culture Calorimeter) for real-time, high precision measurement of the internal temperature of a thermically isolated liquid culture. This instrument is a new technical standard that supports the characterization of other temperature-related BioBricks Parts or Devices.
Characterized four new biobricks (a UCP-expressing yeast, a control strain and two mutant strains with enhanced uncoupling activity) through temperature measurements with the LCC, as well as from relative growth data of the yeast cultures.
Outlined a new approach to Human Practices in Synthetic Biology by writing a Proposal for a Code, that includes a novel concept: concentric ethical units, that might be very useful not only for the Hot Yeast Project but also for any Synthetic Biology research.
An effective model to characterize the behaviour of the thermogenin has been developed. The functionality of the protein has been characterized in terms of it. In future, the obtained value of the parameters can be used by other groups which intend to incorporate this part in their constructions.
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