Team:LMU-Munich/Spore Coat Proteins
The LMU-Munich team is exuberantly happy about the great success at the World Championship Jamboree in Boston. Our project Beadzillus finished 4th and won the prize for the "Best Wiki" (with Slovenia) and "Best New Application Project".
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Spore Crust Proteins
The aim of this project part is to create spores that display fusion proteins on their crust. There are several different proteins forming the spore coat layers of Bacillus subtilis spores. On the outermost layer, the so called spore crust, the CotZ and CgeA proteins are located ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=imamura%20et%20al.%202011%20spore%20crust Imamura et al., 2011]). This is why we used them to create functional fusion proteins to be expressed on our Sporobeads.
The gene cgeA is located in the cgeABCDE cluster and is regulated by its own promoter PcgeA. The cluster cotVWXYZ contains the gene cotZ which is cotranscribed with cotY regulated by the promoter PcotYZ. Another promoter of this cluster PcotV is responsible for the transcription of the other three genes. Those three promoters were evaluated with lux reporter genes to get an impression of their time of activation and their strength (see for more details Bacillus BioBrick Box) so they could be used for expression of spore crust fusion proteins.
The first step was to fuse gfp to cgeA and cotZ as a proof of principle. This way we would determine if it is possible to display proteins on the spore crust and if their expression has any effect on spore formation.
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Bacillus BioBrickBOX |
SporeCoat FusionProteins |
Germination STOP |