Team:Toulouse France

iGEM Toulouse 2016

iGEM Toulouse Team presents
Paleotilis, a shield for the Lascaux cave

Back to the origins

What if iGEM stepped 18,000 years back?

At that time, cavemen painted extraordinary frescoes on the Lascaux cave (France). The cave remained stable until its discovery in 1940, which deeply disturbed its ecosystem. It was closed shortly after mainly because of contamination by fungi that causes colored spots on the frescoes. Nowadays, mechanical and chemical solutions are monthly used and the cave is still in danger due to their limited efficiency.

At iGEM Toulouse, we thought about an innovative biological solution based on the last advances in synthetic biology. It consists in an engineered Bacillus subtilis strain which grow on bacterial organisms present in the cave. It releases antifungals when in close viscinity of fungi. Since we care about environment, an inducible riboswitch-based double toxin/antitoxin system was created to prevent DNA transmission and a physical device was designed to confine our strain.

Project

Discover the context of the Paleotilis project, and the three modules of its design: Predation, Antifungals, and Confinement. Click on the link to learn more about these constructions.