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.

Explore the other pages to see exactly which conditions we are investigating, and which organisms we are isolating genes from! Stay tuned for more detailed pathway illustrations and updates!