A program to help new IGEM teams with assembly standards selection, and site-directed mutagenesis for primers development in case of incompatibility, is this year UTP-Software team project. S²MT as we called it, applies “QuikChange Site-Directed Mutagenesis” [1] considerations for the design of mutagenic primers and gives users the resources to avoid restriction sites, making their designs compatible with IGEM standards.

As a side project (still under development), our team seeks to develop a tool to help teams and researchers to work and study the production of biofuels through synthetic biology. This will be done by analyzing routes from the substrates for the reactions, and then identify the responsible genes for each enzymatic reactions that could produce these biofuels. The target biofuels are biohydrogen, bioethanol, biodiesel and methane.

[1]. Wang, W.; Malcolm, B. A. 1999. Biotechniques. 26:680-682.