Team:Glendale CC AZ/Project/PreviousResearch

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D. radiodurans - Esther

PprI- Andrew


PprI

For the team’s Igem project, we wanted to increase E. coli’s desiccation resistance to help it survive in a desert environment. To do this, we planned to insert different genes from the Deinococcus species into the E. coli to increase its resistance to dessication. One of the genes our Igem group wanted to investigate was PprI. PprI is the transcriptional regulator involved in the expression of many of the DNA damage response proteins in Deinococcus radiodurans. In 2012, the Osaka team transformed E. coli with PprI to determine its effects on hydrogen peroxide resistance. Because of this, a PprI part from this team was in the Igem parts database. This allowed us to order their PprI part from the Igem registry and perform our experiments with it.



LEA

During our research for desiccation-resistance factors, we came across with the 2010 Valencia iGEM project. They demonstrated that late embryogenesis abundant proteins (LEA) from soy beans provided protection against extreme temperatures, when expressed in E. coli. Since high temperatures might lead to desiccation, we decided to explore LEA proteins in more detail. Previous studies have reported that LEA protein enhances the tolerance to various environmental stresses in organisms (Liu, Zheng, Zhang, Wang, & Li, 2010). They were first discovered in cottonseed and other plants vegetative tissues that were exposed to cold temperatures, drought, and high salinity (Liu et al., 2010). LEA proteins are part of an extensive multi-gene family and are classified based on their sequences and expression patterns (Liu et al., 2010). Since Deinococcus was our organism of interest, we looked for studies that had reported homolog LEA proteins in this bacterium. At first, the idea of plant proteins in Deinococcus sounded unconceivable to us. However, our curiosity paid off as we discovered that Deinococcus radiodurans had homolog LEA proteins which are hypothesized to be acquired via horizontal gene transfer (Makarova et al., 2001). Three of these D. radiodurans proteins are DR0105, DR1372 and DR1172 which show similarity to well-characterized and widespread desiccation induced LEA proteins in plants (Makarova et al., 2001).

PprA- Sean

RecA- Teresa

PprM- Teresa