Team:Stanford-Brown/HellCell/Introduction

Hell Cell

Many uses for synthetic biology require survival and function in extreme conditions. Bioreactors and biomining often involve considerable heat and pressure. Other examples include medical use in the digestive system, requiring acid tolerance. Most of all, the potential of bioengineering in space depends critically on the ability to resist the harsh conditions outside of Earth’s atmosphere. For example, applications for Martian colonization must take cold, radiation, and desiccation into account. To these ends, we plan to further unlock the potential of synthetic biology by creating a suite of biobricks to provide resistance to extreme temperatures, pH, radiation, and desiccation. In particular, we will likely characterize the functionality and efficacy of these genes in E. coli, simply due to its ubiquity in biology.

For heat, we will look to hyperthermophilic bacteria and archaea in hot springs and deep-sea vents to hopefully discover genes responsible for their ability to survive in these environments. For cold, we will analyze antifreeze proteins bricked by past iGEM teams as well as membrane-liquefying and heat-generating pathways. There are several mechanisms for acid/base resistance, including production of proton pumps and buffers as well as degradation of organic acids and bases respectively; acidophiles and alkaliphiles provide hints towards many of these mechanisms. Radiation resistance has been well studied in D. radiodurans, but we will create a cassette for E. coli using a subset of the following pathways: melanin, Mn import, superoxide dismutase, and Dps repair systems. Finally, desiccation resistance will be implemented via enhanced water generation, storage, and retrieval.