"
Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich
From 2012.igem.org
Hangout with the UK iGEM Synthetic Biology Teams at Google Campus London
Synthetic Biology is a rapidly growing scientific field in which living organisms and systems are bespoke engineered to create novel materials, fuels, medicines and bio-computational systems. The internationally genetically engineered machines (iGEM) competition, organised by MIT, USA is the world's largest Synthetic Biology competition. The competition was created to inspire interdisciplinary research teams to create the biological and software technologies needed to develop this rapidly growing field.
Join us as we hangout at Google Campus for a day of inspiring presentations, which celebrate the innovative ideas that are emerging from the UK’s premier Synthetic Biology research groups. Our hangout will be broadcast through Google+ Events and Google Hangouts.
Date: 17th August 9:30am – 6pm Venue: Google Campus London Address: 4-5 BONHILL STREET, LONDON, EC2A 4BX
• Please Register before end of July https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEtGOGE4TTJtNGx5Nk4zaVdKMDJ6YkE6MQ#gid=0 • Please create a Google+ Account and then provide us with a link to your profile page. • For more info go to our Google+ event page https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cohvd7udrh42k01j5tgb0mm3ne4/108665177097238931113
The iGEM 2012 team for the Norwich Research Park and University of East Anglia (NRP UEA) are a group of seven biology-based undergraduate students working in the labs within UEA’s BIO building. We have been looking at the role of nitric oxide (NO) in biological systems and are aiming to produce a BioBrick that can sense NO within an environment, report on the levels, and go on to make relevant and desirable changes.
Possible applications we see for this include; cancer therapeutics, where NO levels are detected and raised above the level at which it aids angiogenesis and into the levels at which it is toxic to a tumour; and environmental aspects, where the bio-sensor may be attached to bioluminescence in order to report levels of NO in soil for instance.
Our first BioBrick will be a hybrid bacterial and mammalian promoter (using PyeaR and NS2E9 elements) which will detect NO levels. We aim to use a chassis of Escherichia coli in order to test our BioBrick before investigating its competency within a Salmonella chassis for future applications within a medical system. We also aim to characterise BioBricks produced by previous iGEM teams, especially those involved with sensing physiologically-relevant molecules and reporting with fluorescence or bioluminescence.
We have also looked at various aspects of human outreach and plan to undertake a programme of Synthetic Biology public awareness as well as employing various methods to make our project accessible to those interested outside of the team.
