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From 2012.igem.org

The French froggies: an artificial hormonal system in tadpoles

Fisrt step : Establishment of a new chassis

The first objective of this project is to establish the fundamentals of synthetic biology for the Xenopus. This is to develop and characterize a library of "brick" elements (promoters,rapporteurs, genes, tissue specific expression etc..) that will be formatted with "BioBriques" for integration the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.

This allows direct reuse of our results by students in future editions of iGEM, and by research teams worldwide.

Second step : Biosensors

We will then create the "biosensors" and "biomonitors", capable of detecting pollutants in water by human societies. For example, many drugs such as birth control pillsare found in the river after removal by the system or urinary tract, causing many Hormonal problems in other animals including fish and frogs. The use of tadpoles for detect this type of pollutant provides a big advantage, since it is an organization that is directly exposed to this form of pollution. Moreover, its metabolism is similar to humans, but with a shorter life cycle, it is more readily possible to evaluate the impact of these molecules in animals and human beings who consume the contaminated water. On the other hand, we are actively studying ways innovative biosensing. We are trying to significantly increase the sensitivity of biosensors by allowing them to trigger a circuit for reporting self-induced. Another major area of ​​research is to make "Bio-screening." Instead of designing a number of detectors to a specific type of contamination only (biosensor), we will create genetic circuits that enable monitor the health of Xenopus generally and quantitative (stress condition, followed by many physiological parameters etc..). Dispose such a population is used to find real-time health status of tadpoles and detecting a broad spectrum of disturbances environmentally induced, nonspecific manner. We could thus make inexpensive studies to test the potential harmful or toxic to many products, upstream of a more specific study.