Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour50

Results

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

Figure 1. The hours of work throughout the summer are justified by the excitement of new results. Each team member feels a distinct sense of pride. A peculiar sense of ownership. Accomplishement, even.

We invite you to dig deeper to view each an every one of our results and to experience our excitement. But before you do that, the following page points to our main accomplishments and presents a quick glance at the most cherished of our results: the production of Bacteriorganic Rubber.

Rubber synthesis
The aim of our project was to synthesize rubber in bacteria. To do this, the HRT2 prenyltransferase of Hevea brasiliensis was successfully introduced into the E.coli bacteria. Our H¹-NMR results We have strong indications that we have a rubber producing bacteria (Fig. 1). It is our intention to validate our data and we look forward to presenting the completed work in Lyon.

Figure 2. 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) (Fig. 2).

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 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.

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 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.

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. Or go to next chapter to see what the future brings