Welcome to iGEM 2016!

Your team has been approved and you are ready to start the iGEM season!

Project Introduction

We established our team at about March. Our team consists of different majors, such as biology, math and computer science. Except the twenty team members, we also have two professors and a secondary PI to provide help for the experiment. We divided our members into five groups, they are experimental group, modeling group, wiki group, art group and human practice group. Each group has a leader to be responsible for the details. We organize the meeting with our instructors and secondary PI once a month.

We decided the direct on 8th April. At the meeting, our members put up with a lots of ideas.

• microbic color palette

In order to draw a picture using bacteria, we’d love to create a system which can sense different wavelength of the light, and make different pigment in specific areas. We can transform different kinds of photoreceptor genes into E.coli to form different kinds of cells, which can exhibit corresponding colors. So, when we illuminate an area with a certain kind of laser, different kinds of color can appear, and form images.

• microbic computing system

in order to break the limitation of the theoretical physics in electronic computer, which cannot deal with the NP question until now, we want to design a Hin/hixC system in bacteria, to solve those NP questions which have a high value of practical application.

• ammonia production

We already know that nif gene cluster controls the synthesis of nitrogenase in many organisms. We want to transform part of nif gene into E.coli, to create a new bacteria which can produce ammonia.

• Engineered Multi-domain Protein Machine

We’d love to combine some functional domain of different proteins in order to make a protein machine which can finish a certain biological process more efficiently.

• microbial desalination cell (MDC)

We’d love to design a device in order to desalinize sea water. In a battery, we place Lactobacillus amylovorus in anode chamber, and we place cyanophyta in cathode chamber as carbon source.

After discussing over and over again, meanwhile consulting our instructors and advisors for so many times, we finally decided to reform the cyanobacteria into a proper chassis. Considering that the cyanobacteria has the characters of autotrophy, the capacity of fixing dioxide, high growth rate and a simple genetic background, we realized that it can be an excellent chassis for synthetic biology. To make the cyanobacteria a perfect chassis, several optimization measures have to be done, such as improving their efficiency of photosynthesis, enhancing their resistance to the environment and promoting the efflux of the products, after which the cyanobacterium can be applied to produce biofuel or other chemical substances with lower consumption of nutrition. Our present plan is to focus on the improvement of cyanobacteria's photosynthesis and try to make other optimization at the same time. In addition, we may as well try another project of making plants shining using the endophytic bacteria Bacillus subtilis to provide light at night because we think it also interesting. So our next step is to try both of the projects and then find the one more suitable to be our subject this year.

Wiki template information

We have created these wiki template pages to help you get started and to help you think about how your team will be evaluated. You can find a list of all the pages tied to awards here at the Pages for awards link. You must edit these pages to be evaluated for medals and awards, but ultimately the design, layout, style and all other elements of your team wiki is up to you!