Difference between revisions of "Team:Virginia/ProjectDesign"

To create an effective biocontainment system, when implemented into a target cell, our system must restrict the cell in such a way that it only grows and replicates when a non-natural metabolite is present. Cells using this system will be unable to survive outside of controlled environments, reducing the risk of escape. To accomplish this goal, we aimed to select a protecting group for leucine and a corresponding cleavage enzyme to remove the protecting group, and to replace the wild-type leucyl-tRNA synthetase with a mutant leucyl-tRNA synthetase of our design. The biocontainment functionality of this system begins at metabolite uptake. The cell must be able to take up a non-natural metabolite that is not typically readily available in the environment. We chose the amino acid leucine as the metabolite we would modify. The non-natural modified leucine, after uptake, would then be