Welcome

Welcome to the 2013 UC Davis iGEM Wiki!

We have a created a novel class of transcription factors known as RiboTALs. We sought to address the constraints placed on circuit design by the limited number of well characterized promoters at our disposal, and their respective transcription factors. TetR, LacI, AraC, LuxR...do these sound familiar? What if we had transcriptional regulators that could be used in any chassis, any strain? What if we could directly engineer repressors for target sequences, instead of having to assemble parts so as to place them under control of a promoter? Furthermore, what if we could control this repression system with a molecule of choice? We'd have the ability to host multiple, orthogonal systems within the same chassis. The need to 'bioprospect' metabolites would diminish. A large part of synthetic biology is, ultimately, designing constructs that generate a response to an input stimulus. A construct that is entirely flexible both at its inputs and outputs is the ideal tool to facilitate the engineering of synthetic biology devices. Finally, what if we could increase the degrees of freedom that we as researchers have in the control of gene expression pathways? If we decoupled transcription and translation of a repressor device, maintaining fine-tuned control of both processes, and characterized the behavior of all the parts involved, the dynamic range achievable would be stupendous.

Our device generates Transcriptional Activator-Like (TAL) effectors which can be engineered to bind to and repress any sequence of interest. The production of these repressor proteins is controlled by riboswitches, and thus inherit the potential of riboswitches to respond to any inducer molecule due to their engineerable and modular aptamer binding domains.

We also created a Biobrick Characterization Data Depot for more thorough characterization of the Registry's Biobricks. We hope that future iGEM teams may use this database to better understand a Biobrick's functionality.