Team:TU Munich/Project/Vector Design

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Contents

Vector Design


Responsible: Ingmar Polte

What is the use of DNA sequences coding for valuable enzymes without the possibility to express them and analyze the protein activity?

As we planned to detect the enzymes from our biosynthetic pathways via Strep-tag II, a RFC25 compatible backbone was necessary. As no such backbone was availabe for yeast in the PartsRegistry, an important task at the beginning of our project was the design of an expression vector for yeast which is compatible to the iGEM cloning principles and standards. Based on the commercially available pYES2 vector, manufactured by Invitrogen, we created an vector containing:

  • a RFC 25 compatible multiple cloning site
  • a strep-tag II
  • a 2µ origin for high copy number replication in Saccharomyces cerevisae
  • the URA3 gene to use the uracil prototrophy of S. cerevisiae INVSc' as a selection marker for transfection
  • a pUC origin for high copy number replication in E.coli
  • the ß-lactamase coding gene to use ampicillin as a selection marker for cloning applications in E.coli
  • a galacotsoe inducible PGal 1 promoter
  • a CYC1 transcription terminator

Furthermore we designed several vectors containing our constitutive promoters Tef1, Tef2 and ADH and different additional terminators. The different versions of the vector have been successfully applied and tested in all other subprojects.

Design


Explanations on the figure: Figure A shows the commercial available pYES from Invitrogen on the left. The gel picture in the middle shows the successive deletion of forbidden restriction sides in the vector backbone. The colures of the annotations of the bonds in the gel picture are visualized in the graphic on the right by colored dived circles.

The project work began with the replacement of the original multiple cloning side for a completely new designed multiple cloning site containing the typical RFC10/25 pre- and suffixes. Furthermore we integrated a gene sequence coding for a Strep-tag II in front of the suffix. This facilitates the purification and detection via Western Blot of expressed enzymes dramatically. The new multiple cloning side was constructed of four desoxyribooligonucleotides via oligonucleotide hybridization and ligation into the original pYES vector restricted with the outermost restriction enzymes of the old MCS. In a further step all forbidden restriction sides of the enzymes used in the RFC10/25 standard in the vector backbone were deleted via side directed mutagenesis. The picture above shows different vector samples of this successive process which have been restricted with NgoMIV, PstI and SpeI: The resulting fragments decrease with each step leading to the pure vector backbone which is linearized by cutting in the multiple cloning side. Hence our first expression vector containing the original galactose inducible pGal 1 promoter was ready for cloning with iGEM standards! A second step of this subproject was the exclusion of the f1 origin of replication for the phage λ and of the pGAL1 promoter. The resulting vector pTUM100 can used as powerful basis to integrate a wide variety of user defined promoters, genes and terminators. In our case we integrated the constitutive promoters Tef1, Tef2 and ADH in order to characterize them.


Results


BioBricks backbones

Explanations on the figure: Figure A shows the new multiple cloning site (MCS) containing the RFC 10/25 restriction sides and the DNA sequence coding for the Strep-tag II. Figure B gives an overview of all important functional elements located on the vector backbone. Upstream to the new MCS lies a T7 promoter primer binding site allowing easy forward sequencing of integrated gene constructs using the standard T7 primer. The URA 3 gene is a prototrophy marker used for the selection of transfected cells. Figure C to E present the successfully designed BioBricks: pTUM100 simply contains the new MCS, the transcription terminator and further elements required for cloning and transfection. pTUM102 to pTUM104 contain in addition the constitutive promoters pTef1, pTef2 and ADH. On pTUM104 is the galactose inducible promoter pGAL1 located.


Gel pictures of finished constructs

Characterization

Induction assays with galactose

Characterization of constitutive promoters

Reference