Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour50

Results

If it looks like rubber and smells like rubber, it probably is rubber

iGEM wiki
One of our stated goals during this year’s iGEM competition was to invent a novel and intuitive approach to the iGEM focus of passing on knowledge to a wide and varied audience through the use of a web interface. Through much hard work and great feedback, we are confident that this goal has been accomplished and that our tour is to your liking, dear reader.

iGEM BioBrick parts and devices
iGEM primarily concerns the field of synthetic biology, and one of the ideals of iGEM is the vision of a large registry, where all imaginable DNA sequences usable for a synthetic microbiologist can be found in easy-to-use standardized parts. We have added 4 new basic parts and 13 devices to this registry. Dig deeper to explore the different Bricks and Submitted parts.

iGEM medals
To earn the different medals at iGEM, a certain list of goals must be achieved, each achievement building on the preceding. We believe our project puts us well on route to be awarded a gold medal, and a further description of the goals and our solutions can be found under ‘Judging Criteria’ (Dig deeper).

Figure 1. Controllable construct
An important part of the design of our construct is the capability to control the expression of genes converting the fast growing bacteria to a rubber producing suicidal (at least in theory) bacteria. We proved that addition of IPTG induces the expression of Dxs, and addition of arabinose induces the expression of the prenyltransferase (HRT2).

Optimization of MEP pathway
We attempted to optimize the MEP pathway by overexpressing the genes (dxs and ispG) that our model predicted to be rate limiting. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful in building the a construct containing ispG, and therefore could not test the consequences of overexpressing this particular gene. However, we did build a construct that overexpressed the first rate limiting step (Dxs). Though an effort was made, we weren’t capable of proving or disproving that more IPP and DMAPP were obtained by overexpression of the dxs gene.

Rubber synthesis
Figure 2. The most important aspect of our project was to synthesize rubber in bacteria. To do this, the HRT2 prenyltransferase of Hevea brasiliensis was successfully introduced into the bacteria. We have strong indications that we have accomplished making a rubber producing bacteria. We only need the last validation control to verify for sure that our goal has been reached.

Alongside all these achievements, we learned more about the hard work it requires to work together in large groups and received invaluable lab and life experiences.

Dig deeper to se all our results in details.

Fast forward to see what the future brings