Team:METU Turkey

As a team, besides participating in the jamboree, one of our main aims is to increase the awareness towards synthetic biology in Turkey. For this, we would like to thank our sponsors TUBITAK and METIS for their support.

We design a system for the metal carrying. In our system, there are two light sources. One of them is for the metal source and another is for the destination to where we want to carry metal atoms. And our machines have phototaxis ability. In addition to this, they have metal binding domain in outer surface and bacteriorhodopsin. When we open light at the metal source, they start to move toward source and catch the metal atoms. Then we open the light at the destination while closing the light at the source. So our machines move toward the destination. After the arrival our machines will be exposed to light with specific wavelength to activate bacteriorhodopsin leading to small local pH changing at the outer surface. This pH changing causes the release of metal atoms from the metal binding domain. Eventually, system starts from the beginning and so on.