Cloning

During the project, we have built all the new biobricks for our various modules and we would not like to go into very much detail about the process and overwhelm you with dozens of gels since it mainly involves standard procedures and would be a boring read. You can find all about cloning in our dedicated lab book. Instead, we would like to give you a detailed account of how we constructed the improved and optimised PHB bioplastic synthesis part, BBa_K934001. Both of the improvements were very much based on the predictions of the PHB synthesis metabolic models.

We have made two new construct by modifying the native operon:

[http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1149051 BBa_K1149051] The modellers in the drylab predicted that increased level of phaB enzyme will increase the amount of PHB produced and therefore we decided to change the native Ralstonia eutropha promoter and RBS to a strong constitutive E.coli promoter and RBS in front of the operon.

#2 The second task in the wetlab came from the analysis of the metablic model: we realised that phaA enzyme is not necessary for PHB synthesis if we use 3HB as starting feedstock. Therefore we wanted to take out phaA an construct the phaCB operon for better PHB recycling.