Attributions

Idea

The ideas from the Chalmers iGEM team were presented for the supervisors and advisors during a meeting. The supervisors and advisors only commented on the projects feasibility. The idea to develop a biodegradable pregnancy test kit was “thought out” by the students. The supervisors and advisors then helped the students to proceed with the project by illustrating the usefulness of the pheromone pathway. The supervisors also provided relevant articles.

Homepage

All text, photos and graphics are written/taken/made by the students. The only exceptions are the sponsor logos and text that are directly provided by the sponsors.

Practical lab work and preparations

All preparations for the laboratory work except some common media and plates were done by the students.

All laboratory work during the summer has been performed by the students. The students received some advice how to perform the experiments from supervisors and other staff in the System Biology group at Chalmers.

Materials

The LHCGR gene was ordered from a synthesizing company. The fmo gene was provided by Si Wouk Kim from Chosun University in South Korea and the tryptophanase gene was derived from genomic DNA from E.coli. The FIG1 promoter was amplified from genomic yeast DNA.

The final strain used (IMFD-73) was provided by the Kondo group from Kobe University in Japan and has the endogenous GPCR Ste2 and the feedback regulator Sst2 deleted. Five amino acids in the native yeast Gα protein are replaced by the corresponding ones from the human Gα protein.

The lab strain CEN.PK 113-11C and the plasmids pSP-GM1 and pIYC04 were received from the System Biology Group at Chalmers.

Modeling

The idea to model the yeast pheromone pathway and to modify it to suit our needs was given to us by our supervisor Torbjörn Lundh. Ideas and suggestions of how to model our pathway was taken from different articles which we found ourselves in different databases. To solve the system of ODE's MATLAB was used.

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