"Back to the Basics"

When we were looking for a project this year, we started by looking back at both successful and unsuccessful projects past years. Through doing this, we noticed a trend in the projects. Lately many teams, both successful and unsuccessful, have been attempting to solve very complex problems with synthetic biology. We realized that many of these teams do not complete their research because at the core, they are trying to solve incredibly complex projects with a field of science that is new in itself.

That's how the idea of going "Back to the Basics" came about. We decided that instead of trying to solve an incredibly complex problem using synthetic biology, we were going to solve some of the smaller problems within synthetic biology. The idea is that if we increase the development of the core foundation of the field then it will open up a multitude of new opportunities for breakthroughs. In other words, why try to cure cancer with synthetic biology when we can't even make robust genetic circuits?

So we then went back and looked at the small problems with synthetic biology, such as optimization of protein expression, standardized characterization methods, and creating robust genetic circuits. We decided to tackle these seemingly smaller problems all at once instead of pursuing a massive, complex project.

That's how the 2013 Purdue University iGEM team is going "Back to the Basics of Synthetic Biology".

Abstract

Synthetic biology has always strived to prove that classical engineering principles are applicable in the field of science; however, several key challenges have yet to be overcome.

These include designing robust genetic circuits, predictive expression of proteins, and a standardization of how we, as synthetic biologists, characterize our parts to be continually utilized in ever changing systems. The Taguchi Method is a statistical way to analyze a set of parameters, for example which promoter to use with a gene of interest, and determines a set of experiments to determine which combination of the parameters gives the most robust system to outside noise such as E. coli strain.

Optimization of protein expression is done by introducing multiple shine dalgarno sequences into cistrons containing the gene of interest.

Finally, collaboration among teams allowed for a new standardized form of submitting characterization of parts to the Parts Registry.

These combined help move the field of synthetic biology one step closer to being able to successfully prove that biology can in fact be engineered.