Team:British Columbia/Project2

From 2013.igem.org

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There are an estimated 10<sup>31</sup> phage particles on earth, meaning that any bacterial process is constantly under the threat of infection. Industrial bacterial bioprocesses are no exception, and phage infections frequently devastate bioreactor facilities. This results in high economic cost. In fact, one of the main considerations in choosing the location of a bioreactor is the extent of environmental phage sources. Even in ideal locations, decontamination is frequently required and is the most substantial day-to-day financial burden. Engineering bacterial resistance to phage infection is a common scientific goal; however, these attempts are usually undermined by the inherent diversity of phage. The bacterial immune system CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is one way in which bacteria naturally deal with phage infection in the environment and has become a powerful tool in genetic engineering, with specificity at the single nucleotide level.
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With an estimated 10<sup>31</sup> phage particles on earth, bacteria is constantly under the threat of infection.  
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For the first time, we re-factored the CRISPR system down to its minimum components and demonstrated engineered specificity in <i>E. coli</i>. We analyzed all available sequence information from two common phage families that infect E. coli and designed the most broadly neutralizing systems possible. This work provides a proof-of-concept experiment for engineering bioreactor immunity, and provides all the sufficient modules to facilitate future engineering of CRISPR in bacteria. Moreover, having these working components in the BioBrick registry is incredibly exciting as its tractability will endlessly expand the engineering potential of the iGEM community going forward.
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This can greatly affect the numerous industrial processes performed with bacteria, such as yogurt production. Problems arising from phage contamination can be very costly.
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Click the links below to explore the different parts of our project...
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We sought to solve this problem by engineering bacterial resistance to phage infection. We reconfigured the bacterial immune system CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to provide resistance to common phages.  
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Sticking with the yogurt theme, we engineered several biosynthetic pathways in bacteria to produce different ‘flavours’ or compounds of interest. These could potentially be used in yogurt production so that the bacteria involved could ‘flavour’ the yogurt as it is made.  
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Through our work with CRISPR, we came to believe that that it could be used to modulate the different the flux of the biosynthetic pathways and provide an avenue for population control within a complex mixed culture. The population dynamics involved in this process were mathematically modeled.  
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<b>Click the buttons below to read more on each of the different aspects of our project or learn about the parts we standardized and submitted to the registry this year!</b>
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Latest revision as of 03:49, 29 October 2013

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With an estimated 1031 phage particles on earth, bacteria is constantly under the threat of infection.

This can greatly affect the numerous industrial processes performed with bacteria, such as yogurt production. Problems arising from phage contamination can be very costly.

We sought to solve this problem by engineering bacterial resistance to phage infection. We reconfigured the bacterial immune system CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to provide resistance to common phages.

Sticking with the yogurt theme, we engineered several biosynthetic pathways in bacteria to produce different ‘flavours’ or compounds of interest. These could potentially be used in yogurt production so that the bacteria involved could ‘flavour’ the yogurt as it is made.

Through our work with CRISPR, we came to believe that that it could be used to modulate the different the flux of the biosynthetic pathways and provide an avenue for population control within a complex mixed culture. The population dynamics involved in this process were mathematically modeled.

Click the buttons below to read more on each of the different aspects of our project or learn about the parts we standardized and submitted to the registry this year!







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