Difference between revisions of "Team:BIT-China/Description"

Killer System

Plasmids are self-replicating pieces of DNA harboring functional genes and have been widely used as DNA recombinant tools. However, the deficiency, plasmid’s stability, has put many scientists into a dilemma. During the experiments, we often find that the recombinant plasmids’ concentration declined with unknown cause.

Although researchers has designed many widely used methods, such as using auxotrophic bacteria and resistance screening, adding regents during the experiment is too convenient. We do have other method called selfish plasmids which use toxin gene and antitoxin gene at the same time. Once the cell becomes plasmid-free, those toxin protein which is more difficult-to-decompose longer will come into play. Nevertheless, it still has its shortcoming. We don’t know in what situation a cell can be called as plasmid-free? And in another way we can say, what’s the threshold of plasmids’ concentration? Our team is going to optimize the whole system,to make it more accurate, more controllable and intelligent.

So we decide to set up an alarm clock in bacteria with toxin gene and CRISPR Cas which could remind the bacteria of how many plasmids remain to work. We do hope that our project will not only make great contribution to animalcule fermentation engineering helping saving a large sum of extra manpower and material resources, but also show you a new research way of measuring the amount of plasmids.