Difference between revisions of "Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich/Collaborations/kent"

We have collaborated with UKC to image the adherence of E.col and Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 onto graphite and iron. In return we have offered to model their proteins and 3D print them. This collaboration gave us a better indication of our potential fuel cell and what materials could be used when our construct is fully developed.

At the iGEM Westminster Meetup we got into contact with the iGEM Kent team (UKC) and started discussing potential ideas for collaboration. We established an experiment which would address the adherence of S.oneidensis MR-1 onto potential anode materials. UKC would provide us access to their Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), and in return we would model their proteins and 3D print their structures.

Figure 1: Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) of S.oneidensis MR-1 on graphite (Figure 1A) and iron (Figure 1B) after 12 hours incubation. (A) S.oneidensis MR-1 adhered to the proposed cathode material, graphite, after incubation time of 12h in LB broth. Graphite discs were sculpted from 9B graphite pencil and glued onto 10mm Mica Iron discs. (B) S.oneidensis MR-1 did not adhere to iron after incubation time of 12h in LB broth, which acted as our positive result. Iron discs were Mica Iron 10mm discs purchased from Agar Scientific.

The AFM results showed that S.oneidensis MR-1 could adhere to graphite, figure 1A. Unfortunately, no S.oneidensis MR-1 adhered to iron which should have been the positive control, figure 1B. After discussions with Kent we determined that the source of the error could be due to the treatment of the Iron Mica discs. Sadly, we could not pursue improving the experiment due to time.

In return we modelled UKC’s, native and non-native, proteins (Figure 2). Unfortunately, the protein models showed low alignment, high disorder and low sequence coverage. This means that the modelled-proteins were not very accurate. After discussions with UKC, it was decided not to 3D print the models.