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Team:UNITN-Trento
From 2012.igem.org
We will save the World. One statue at a time.
Hi, we're the UniTN 2012 iGEM team!
Our project will be about statues and momuments. Here in Italy there are lots of them, magnificent and important. The problem is, with the modern society going on and everything, they get all ugly. Black ugly. We want to solve that. Ah, and protect them for the future, too.
You know what the cool thing is? We'll engineer bacteria just to do that!
Project Codename: Statuary
Statues and monuments all over the world are not enjoyed to the extent that they should be because they are covered in a disfiguring black crust.
A practical solution would be if a cheap mechanism were available to continually remove the pollutant molecules that adhere to the surface of statues. To build such a system, we are engineering E. coli to dissolve the disfiguring black crust, which consists mainly of CaSO4 (i.e. gypsum).
More specifically, we are constructing an aerobic sulfur reducing pathway composed of a mutant E. coli serine acetyltransferase (CysE) that is insensitive to feedback inhibition and a Treponema denticola cysteine desulfhydrase. CysE acetylates serine to give a precursor for cysteine synthesis, which also activates a sulfate assimilation pathway. This pathway should then mobilize the SO4 of the black crust to make cysteine. Finally, the cysteine desulfhydrase converts cysteine to H2S, pyruvate, and ammonia, thus completing the transformation of black crust sulfate to hydrogen sulfide gas.
Project Codename: Terminator 5
Surprisingly little standardization of T7 bacteriophage derived parts has occurred, despite the prevalence of T7 parts in recombinant technologies.
Additionally, the compatibility between T7 and E. coli derived parts has not been explored. For example, how efficient are T7 transcriptional terminators with E. coli RNA polymerase and is an E. coli transcriptional terminator effective with T7 RNA polymerase?
To better understand the compatibility of the two systems and to begin to better characterize T7 biological parts, we are measuring the termination efficiencies of T7 and E. coli transcriptional terminators with E. coli and T7 RNA polymerases.
To facilitate our measurements, we have developed a new biobrick compatible vector for ratiometric analyses by fluorescence spectroscopy and cell sorting.
Project ➞
Our awesome project. We have a brief overview of what we're doing. This the place to look if you want more details.
Blog ➞
Our daily mumbling. The Journal is not ready yet, but we have a blog with our impressions. Also, check out our Facebook page!
Team ➞
Our team members.
We're pretty cool, so stop by.
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