Team:NTNU-Trondheim

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Trondheim iGEM 2013

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Mercury
The project



Gram negative bacteria export numerous proteins into the periplasm. The twin-arginine translocation pathway (Tat pathway) is a protein export, or secretion pathway found in plants, bacteria, and archaea. The Tat pathway serves to actively translocate folded proteins across a lipid membrane bilayer. By using this transportationsystem we aim to introduce new proteins into the periplasm of bacteria. Once in the periplasm the protein will to some extent end up in outer membrane vesicles (OMV's) that budd of the bacteria.

As all gram negative bacteria produce outer membrane vesicles, we looked into the content of these vesicles. Was the sorting of proteins random? Could we direct certain proteins toward them? And what function would that give? Can we use this to our advantage?

Studies show that a twin-arginine signal peptide is able to direct the export of active green fluorescent protein (GFP) in E.coli and that translocation almost exclusively occur by the Tat-pathway. With this in mind we proceeded with making a construct containing tat and a GFP. As the goal of the project is to determine if vesicles can be utilized for drug delivery we want to see if they can be masked from the immunesystem by introducing a specific protein.

Protein G is known to bind to Human Serum Albumin which helps S.dysgalactiae subsp. equisimilis hide from the immune system. Protein G could therefore be a potential important piece in a drug carrier by masking it from immunological destruction. Introducing protein G into vesicles also demonstrate that it is indeed possible to manipulate the content and therefore the properties of OMV's.


About us

This is the third year a team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) is participating in the iGEM competition. Our team consists of five students with background in Biotechnology, Molecular Medicine and Medical Technology. Mostly our collective background is in molecular biology colored with biophysics, immunology and biotechnology. We have four advisors with different specialities! Rahmi is our lab-GOD and has all the answers. Eivind gives us money and inspiration, Martin is our GFP-expert and Gunvor with her past iGEM team experience has been a lot of help! We are naive students that want to come up with crazy ideas that supervisors are to experienced to consider an opportunity. Our project this year is HIGH-risk and it was almost immediately clear to us that this was what we wanted to do this year. Considering the time-limit of iGEM it was an ambitious project and had everything gone as planned and expected we could have reached our goal. We still believe the project has potential and should not be abandoned. We'we all enjoyed working as a team and learned tons about synthetic biology and the potential this field has feels unlimited! We have had a lot of fun, the life of a scientist is like a rollercoaster of up's and down's but the excitement and curiosity of research will always be a strong motivator!