Team:NYMU-Taipei

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National Yang Ming University
Taipei, Taiwan

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Overview of 2013 NYMU iGEM Team Project

To save bees from Nosema ceranae infection, the culprit of colony collapse disorder (CCD), NYMU-Taipei iGEM team has created the so-called Bee. coli from Escherichia coli MG1655, which naturally resides in bees. The Bee. coli is designed to work successively as follows: (1) Bee. coli continuously secretes mannosidase to inhibit the sprouting of N. ceranae spores. (2) if the bee is infected with N. ceranae, the fungus-killing-circuit with a positive feedback design will be turned on to wipe out N. ceranae. (3) if these designer weapons should fail to conquer N. ceranae, a bee-suicide-operon will be activated to kill the infected bees but save their companions.

Besides, a light-inducible lysis system is created to ensure our Bee. coil only lives inside of the bee. In addition, we have used encapsulation as the method to send our Bee. coli into the bee. Since the capsule will only dissolve in a bee’s gut, our Bee. coli will not wantonly spread out.

Achievements

1. We have documented and sent 23 new BioBricks to part registry.

2. We have demonstrated a convenient and safe way to send genetic modified E. coli into other organisms and proved to be effective in vivo when using this method in bees.

3. We have designed a light-induced lysis system to make sure genetic modified E. coli does not spread through the environment.

4. We have improved the function of an existing BioBrick Part AhpC promoter K362001 by mutagenesis and enzyme splicing.

5. We created a precise modeling of how much dose is needed for a certain level of infection in a colony.

6. By hardworking of modeling, we have constructed a T7 polymerase mediated positive feedback circuit. The circuit is a sensitive delay-induced switch.

7. We have helped NTU-Taida iGEM team characterized their BioBrick devices, the ACE (BBa_K1157020) and CEA (BBa_K1157021).

8. We have made video documentations of performing experimental procedures. They are the ways that we conduct wet-lab experiments.

9. We have gone to bee farms and help the beekeepers to check if their bees were infected by Nosema ceranea.

10. We have designed and created specific primer sets to identify Nosema ceranea. These primers provide a fast and precise way to identify Nosema ceranea beyond traditional microscopic methods.