Team:Glendale Community College

From 2013.igem.org

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Revision as of 07:26, 23 September 2013

Glendale Community College Arizona

iGEM 2013

Desiccation Toolkit

Desert areas, making up almost one-quarter of the Earth surface, are home to 500 million people. As a result of human habitation, every continent in the world except Antarctica is increasingly and adversely affected by desertification. Studies forecasting climate trends indicate that desert regions will face an even drier future – in regard to both climatic factors and drought conditions – stemming from the influence of human activities. One human-created impact on these desert environments is pollution. Many remediation challenges exist specific to the extremely dry conditions present in these arid locales. For example, what happens when a desert area is polluted with such substances as plastics, where commonly employed bioremediation agents used for environmental cleanup cannot survive desert climates’ high temperature and low humidity extremes? Our team has developed a kit containing biological components that will provide desiccation resistance to organisms used to facilitate the elimination of contaminants, like plastics, in desert-like environments. Our goal is to design an assortment of complementary parts, which will strengthen organisms and help to broaden their climatic and geographic range of effectiveness. While some parts included in our kit could, conceivably, provide resistance to other types of stresses, such as ionizing radiation, we will initially focus on desiccation. Because of its potential to expand the extent of the efficacy of these biological breakdown expedients into even climatically extreme territories, our kit could be a valuable addition to any bioremediation project.

Welcome to Our Wiki!

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Some pictures from our experiments.

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 <p><b><big style="color: rgb(95,158,160);"><big><big><big> Desiccation Toolkit</big></big></big></big></b></p>
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-We began our project with a plan to characterize existing biobricks, as well as create a few of our own to complete a comprehensive desiccation toolkit that can be used for a variety of applications. Osaka’s 2011 iGEM team created coding device biobricks for genes PprI (BBa_K602000), PprM (BBa_K602002), PprA (BBa_K602001), and RecA (BBa_K602003) as well as expression parts for PprI (BBa_K602005), PprM (BBa_K602007), and PprA (BBa_K602006). We wanted to characterize these parts in a novel way, as Osaka did not expose their transformed bacteria to salt stress. We also planned to expose the transformed bacteria to our Hydrogen Peroxide Growth Curve Assay for further characterization. University College London’s 2012 iGEM team created a coding part for IrrE (BBa_K729001), as well as an expression device containing their coding sequence for IrrE (BBa_K729005). We planned to further characterize their IrrE biobricks by exposing the transformed E.coli to our Salt Stress Growth Curve Assay as well as our Hydrogen Peroxide Growth Curve Assay. Valencia’s 2010 team created an expression part for one of the Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins, which also is said to confer salt and oxidative resistance when transformed in E.coli. <img style="width: 150px; height: 150px;" alt="GCC" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2013/3/3f/Gel.png" align="right">Our goal was to further characterize their LEA biobrick. Through rigorous research using bioinformatics, we found that homologs to these genes exist in a local bacterium, Deinococcus hopiensis. Our plan was to create coding devices and expression devices for PprI, PprM, PprA, RecA, IrrE, and LEA from the local D. hopiensis bacterium as well as a LEA biobrick from Deinococcus radiodurans. We wished to transform these genes from D. hopiensis and D. radiodurans to E.coli, as E.coli is a well-known, easily accessible, and commonly used chassis. We, would then expose the transformed bacteria to salt stress and hydrogen peroxide stress, and carefully characterize the effects.
+Desert areas, making up almost one-quarter of the Earth surface, are home to 500 million people. As a result of human habitation, every continent in the world except Antarctica is increasingly and adversely affected by desertification. Studies forecasting climate trends indicate that desert regions will face an even drier future – in regard to both climatic factors and drought conditions – stemming from the influence of human activities. One human-created impact on these desert environments is pollution. Many remediation challenges exist specific to the extremely dry conditions present in these arid locales. For example, what happens when a desert area is polluted with such substances as plastics, where commonly employed bioremediation agents used for environmental cleanup cannot survive desert climates’ high temperature and low humidity extremes? Our team has developed a kit containing biological components that will provide desiccation resistance to organisms used to facilitate the elimination of contaminants, like plastics, in desert-like environments. Our goal is to design an assortment of complementary parts, which will strengthen organisms and help to broaden their climatic and geographic range of effectiveness. While some parts included in our kit could, conceivably, provide resistance to other types of stresses, such as ionizing radiation, we will initially focus on desiccation. Because of its potential to expand the extent of the efficacy of these biological breakdown expedients into even climatically extreme territories, our kit could be a valuable addition to any bioremediation project.
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