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From 2012.igem.org

The Project

Synechosunshine: photosynthetically powered biolamp

We present an artificial consortium between 2 specialized bacteria by the means of genetic engineering, in order to obtain a photosynthetically fed biolamp. It is a novel proposal of synthetic ecology, based on the use of an efficient photosynthesizer (the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus) modified to become an exporter of sucrose and diel switch of the activity of Aliivibrio fischeri, a marine bacterium widely known for its bioluminescent properties in response to quorum sensing signals. Our modified cyanobacteria feed the population of A. fischeri through a transporter protein and produce AHL to induce bioluminescence in response to the activity of a photosensitive operator, which would activate only at night. We also have tried to transform different microalgae with bioluminescence genes to test their effectiveness. We look forward to develop an efficient and autosufficient environmentally friendly biolamp, with potential application to cover the illumination needs of many infrastructure sectors.

Team We are an interdisciplinary group from Valencia composed by 13 students with backgrounds in biotechnology, biology, marine science and engineering. We come from three different universities and have been working hard during the summer to present you our Synechosunshine.	Human Practices We have created a blog to talk about Synthetic Biology, post some interviews to experts in Bioethics, report some of the activities we did to teach people about Synthetic Biology and invite some participants of previous years to talk about their experiences in iGEM.
Achievements Do you want to know all the achievements we got along the development of our proyect? Just click here!	Acknowledgements This section contains the names of all the people who made this proyect possible. Thank you very much to all of you!

Contact us: igemvalencia2012@gmail.com