Team:Dundee/Part Collection

Part Collection

Part Collection

Our part collection contains a number of parts that will prove useful to future teams in a variety of different projects.

Part Collection

Included in this collection are two pH sensitive promoters and a bile salt sensitive promoter which have been combined with a brick containing gfp and RBS terminators. These promoters are an excellent starting point for any construct that is needed to function throughout the animal digestive tract. The pH promoters are intended to initiate gene expression in the stomach and the bile salt promoter can initiate gene expression in the intestine, where bile salts are present.

Our truncated colicins containing a multiple cloning site provide a unique template to which a multitude of toxic warheads can be added. This can be used to create variation in the toxin, making it unrecognisable to its target, or to increase or change the specificity of the toxin. The chimeras that we have created using this template demonstrate that the multiple cloning site functions well and toxic domains can be readily added, meaning that these constructs could be used for a number of different purposes. Chimeras created using our truncated colicins as a template can be used alongside the promoters to optimise the toxins to be produced throughout the digestive tract.

Finally, the lysis cassettes we have submitted could be used in combination with the promoters to lyse the cell, releasing toxins in a specific part of the digestive tract, presumably where the unwanted bacteria being targeted resides. The lysis of the cell not only released the toxin, but prevents GM bacteria, which may contain toxic immunity, from colonising the gut or being released into the surrounding environment when excreted from the body.