Post-Regional Accomplishments

Our team has had many accomplishments since the regional jamboree!

In our Human Practices project, we...

• Returned to industry experts to see if we accomplished our goals and what the next steps should be.

• Characterized the functionality of our previously submitted Prha (BBa_K902066) promoter using GFP fluorescence.

• Tested an additional complete kill switch device using the Prha (BBa_K902084) promoter with our S7 kill gene.

• Further characterized our previously validated magnesium riboswitch kill gene construct (BBa_K902018).

In terms of FRED, we...

• Electrochemically characterized an inducible lacz (BBa_K902090) circuit, replacing a faulty existing circuit in the registry containing a frameshift.

• Electrochemically characterized a constitutive bglX (BBa_K902005) generator in terms of its electrochemical activity.

• Characterized and demonstrated how 3 different hydrolase-producing circuits can be used simultaneously in order to create a multiplex biosensor.

• Tested one of our transposon library hits with our electrochemical reporter, showing that we can use our system to detect toxins electrochemically.

• Validated our system with tailings using our transposon system and electrochemical reporter to be able to selectively detect toxins on real oil sands samples.

In terms of OSCAR, we...

• Obtained additional characterization data in validation of our flux-variability analysis model.

• Characterized the ability of our novel amdA (BBa_K902041) BioBrick to selectively remove primary amides from ring structures with remarkable efficiency, turning them into a substrate that the Petrobrick (BBa_K590025) can likely convert into hydrocarbons.

• Validated a scale up model for using our bioreactor/belt skimmer system in producing and extracting hydrocarbons.