Team:Calgary Wetware/Project

From 2008.igem.org

Revision as of 18:14, 31 July 2008 by KevinMcLeod (Talk | contribs)


This is a template page. READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS.
You are provided with this team page template with which to start the iGEM season. You may choose to personalize it to fit your team but keep the same "look." Or you may choose to take your team wiki to a different level and design your own wiki. You can find some examples HERE.
You MUST have a team description page, a project abstract, a complete project description, and a lab notebook. PLEASE keep all of your pages within your Team:Example namespace.



You can write a background of your team here. Give us a background of your team, the members, etc. Or tell us more about something of your choosing.
Example logo.png

Tell us more about your project. Give us background. Use this is the abstract of your project. Be descriptive but concise (1-2 paragraphs)

Your team picture
Team Example 2


Home The Team The Project Parts Submitted to the Registry Modeling Notebook

(Or you can choose different headings. But you must have a team page, a project page, and a notebook page.)


Contents

Overall project

Microorganisms use pheromones to monitor their own population density as well as to detect and interact with other microbial species in a process known as quorum sensing. For instance, bacteria can disrupt the pheromone signals of other competing bacteria, effectively preventing their proliferation. In a similar sense, we will exploit the natural communication systems involving Autoinducer-1 (AI-1) from Vibrio fischeri and Autoinducer-2 (AI-2) from Vibrio harveyi, to create a model biosensor system in Escherichia coli. We will engineer the genetic circuits necessary for the production of these pheromones into two populations of E. coli (termed Bad guy #1 and Bad guy #2, as per their respective Autoinducer). In addition, our third population of E. coli (termed Champion cell) acts as a biosensor by receiving these signal inputs and subsequently initiating transcription of specific E. coli-targeted bacteriocins (i.e. colicins). The presence of AI-1 induces the Champion to produce a colicin to which Bad guy #1 is susceptible, but to which Bad guy #2 is resistant, and vice-versa for AI-2. An additional aspect of our system is the ability of the Champion cell to report the presence of each specific Bad guy by producing a specific fluorescent protein (i.e. either green or red fluorescent protein) in tandem with the specific colicin as determined by the presence of either AI-1 or AI-2. We constructed this system using the molecular cloning methods utilized in iGEM. While the Vibrio fischeri components of our system were obtained as standardized parts from the iGEM Registry, we plan to clone and standardize all parts of Vibrio harveyi AI-2 quorum sensing system. All of the standardized parts will be flanked by the specific restriction endonuclease sites as required for iGEM BioBricks. This will allow for the simple and iterative directional cloning strategy for the construction of the necessary genetic circuits.

Project Details

Part 2

The Experiments

Part 3

Results