Team:Wisconsin-Madison

Engineering the limonene production metabolic pathway: TCC.

Creating a tool to evaluate the translation of heterologous genes in Eschericia coli.

TCC

Translational couplding cassette

In synthetic biology, one of the most powerful tools a research has is the ability to express heterologous genes in Escherichia coli. Unfortunately this does not always work. A common challenge when using non-native genes in metabolic engineering is determining if they are being properly expressed. To address this issue, we have constructed a BioFusion compatible system for diagnosing the failure of a gene expression at the translational level. This system couples the translation of the target gene to a fluorescent reporter gene. Fluorescence will only be detected when the target gene is entirely translated. This construct enables synthetic biologists to quickly determine if a gene is being expressed without the need for costly antibiodies or analytical instruments.

This tool is based on a phenomenon known as translational coupling.