Overview

Idea

The original idea of this project is really simple. Getting bored of the indifferent, round round colony on the culture dish, we wish to make the bacteria grow into the form of a star, a smiling face, or any other patterns we desire.

Instead of the traditional method of painting a star on the culture dish, and let the colony grow into this patten, we try to design a biobrick system which let the bacteria take the irregular shape all by itself, despite external conditions.

That means, not only the colony can grow into to shape of a star, but also, even if you pick one cell from the colony, and incubate it on another clean culture medium. That cell will also grow into a colony, which has the shape of a star.

Meanning

Although the idea is like some kind of bio-game, our project is not that meanningless. Comparing the single cell organism like Escherichia coli, and some simplest multicell organism like Spongia, we notice that a significant difference between them is that the cells of a multicell organism can act as a whole, and construct a certain structure.

That is to say, the biobrick system we are constructing is meant to make the single cell bacteria grow into a colony which can act like a multicell organism. To perform gene manipulation on a multicell level, would be a promising and interesting task.

System

In order to construct a multicell system, several vital part must be taken into consideration. We use a toggle switch to save a status, which simulate the cell differentiation, a AHL generate-receive system for intercelluar communication, a antisense mRNA biobrick as cell division inhibitor, in order to control the shape of bacteria colony. We designed a cell movement control device to start the differentiation automaticly, as well as a light sensor system to start it artificially for easier control and futher application.

Light Sensor

Toggle Switch

Intercelluar Communication

Cell Division Inhibitor