Team:Hawaii

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The Project

Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic bacteria that can convert carbon dioxide to sugars using the same machinery as plants. The main goal of the Hawaii team is to make a "toolkit" for cyanobacteria, which hold promise as producers of biofuels and other bioproducts.

We constructed a number of tools to more easily and effectively engineer cyanobacteria, including

1) a BioBrick switch that turns on a downstream gene when nitrate is added,

2) a second BioBrick that mediates protein export from the cell into the surrounding medium and

3) a naturally occurring shuttle vector to BioBrick format to allow easy transfer of existing and new BioBricks into cyanobacteria.

Our toolkit was designed to allow controlled production and recovery of bioproducts. Additionally, our vector has the potential to transform other gram negative bacteria and possibly even plants via Agrobacterium.