Latest revision as of 18:23, 25 September 2013

Project Description

There are an estimated 10³¹ 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, resulting in high economic cost. In fact, one of the main considerations in choosing the location of a bioreactor is the 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.

For the first time, we re-factored the CRISPR system down to its minimum components and demonstrated engineered specificity in E. coli. We analyzed all available sequence information from two common phage families that infect E. coli and designed the most broadly neutralizing systems possible. The 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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-<i>Lactobacillus</i> is one of the major groups of bacteria used in yogurt
-production.  Our iGEM project explores the ways in which we could
-engineer <i>Lactobacillus</i> to improve yogurt.  First, we are examining the
-problem of viral infections, which can cause batches of yogurt to fail.
-Considerable efforts, including sterilization strategies and culture rotation
-schedules, are used to reduce plant downtime caused by these phages.
-By incorporating CRISP-R bacterial immunity into <i>Lactobacillus</i>,
-specifically targeting it to prevent infection from common dairy phages,
-we are attempting to “vaccinate” yogurt fermenters against viral
-collapse.
 </p>
 <p>
-Second, we are trying to avoid the cost of adding flavour to yogurt
-after fermentation by engineering the bacteria to produce these
-compounds themselves. This would also lessen our
-reliance on food additives derived from petrochemicals, thereby
-making fermented dairy products greener. We plan on engineering
-metabolic pathways which will flavour our yogurt with vanilla and
-cinnamon by producing vanillin and cinnamaldehyde, respectively.  We are
-also working to construct a caffeine synthesis pathway to see if food
-products can be “naturally” caffeinated by bacteria.  We are currently
-implementing the CRISP-R immune system and flavour production
-pathways in <i>E. coli</i> as a proof of concept.
 </p>
 <p>
-Finally, as dairy probiotics are widely accepted as not only being
-safe, but beneficial, they provide an interesting system to explore
-the controversial issue of genetically modified organisms in food.
-We’re working with locals from business, marketing, philosophy,
-psychology and land and food systems to see if we can better
-understand how a variety of people approach the issue.
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+<div style="float:left">
+<p>
+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, resulting in high economic cost.  In fact, one of the main considerations in choosing the location of a bioreactor is the 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.
+</p><p>
+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 <i>E. coli</i> and designed the most broadly neutralizing systems possible. The 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.
+</p><p>

Team:British Columbia/Project

From 2013.igem.org

Latest revision as of 18:23, 25 September 2013

Project Description