Difference between revisions of "Team:Ionis Paris/Parts"

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The biosensor is our favorite part because it is the heart of our project and because it took us a lot time to create. Like it is already explain in the <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Ionis_Paris/Biobrick_Design">Biobrick Design</a> section, this biobrick is composed of the Pr promoter (Bba_K2023004) which is a constitutive promoter driving the transcription of the XylR gene (Bba_K2023005) coding for the XylR protein. The XylR protein is able to bind aromatic hydrocarbons that carry a methyl group like toluene and xylene. When XylR has bind toluene for instance, it is able to regulate the Pu promoter has a transcriptional regulator. Then, Pu is activated and it allows the transcription of the bioluminescent reporter gene GLuc (Pu+GLuc: Bba_K2023003), coding for the Gaussia luciferase. When this enzyme reacts with its substrate luciferine, a substance called Coelenterazine, it emits luminescence.
  
 
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Revision as of 16:28, 17 October 2016

Favorite Part: our biosensor

Part Name Nickname Type Designer Lengh
Bba_K2023001 BB123 Biosensor device Measurement Célia Chenebault, Camille Soucies, Benjamin Piot 3156 bp
The biosensor is our favorite part because it is the heart of our project and because it took us a lot time to create. Like it is already explain in the Biobrick Design section, this biobrick is composed of the Pr promoter (Bba_K2023004) which is a constitutive promoter driving the transcription of the XylR gene (Bba_K2023005) coding for the XylR protein. The XylR protein is able to bind aromatic hydrocarbons that carry a methyl group like toluene and xylene. When XylR has bind toluene for instance, it is able to regulate the Pu promoter has a transcriptional regulator. Then, Pu is activated and it allows the transcription of the bioluminescent reporter gene GLuc (Pu+GLuc: Bba_K2023003), coding for the Gaussia luciferase. When this enzyme reacts with its substrate luciferine, a substance called Coelenterazine, it emits luminescence.

Here

Our Core Project

We started to work on a biosensor, a modified cell able to respond to a given signal. The goal of our cell would be to respond to the detection of a specific pollutant by emitting bioluminescence. We used the XylR protein, known to bind to molecules such as the toluene and benzene (two important pollutants), and once bound to activate the Pu promoter. Activation of this promoter would then trigger luciferase synthesis, allowing bioluminescence. Once our biosensor plasmid assembled, we used E. coli bacteria as a chassis organism.

The Biology behind Quantifly

Measurement

As we wanted to precisely quantify air pollution, we started working with CelloCad, a software used for plasmid optimization. Thus, we tried to improve the characterization of the two promoters of our biosensor, in order to build an optimized version of our plasmid.

Learn more about our work with CelloCad

BioBricks

We developed a large number of BioBricks during our project, and tried to characterize them as best as we could, through several processes (e.g sequencing). We also worked on improving the characterization of the XylR Coding Sequence BioBrick (BBa_K1834844) through addition of a His-tag to it, and the sequence of the Gluc protein (BBa_K1732027). Please follow the link to access all informations about our:

Parts & Characterization
Proof of Concept

Hardware

Our project aimed to solve the small-scale measurement problem and to valorize the qualities of a biosensor. We therefore developed a drone that could perform all the measurements and mappings we needed, along with an airlock tube able to sample the air while containing our biosensor bacteria.

Learn more about our Hardware

Entrepreneurship

We investigated deeply what was the air pollution measurement market in our area, in order to establish a first Business Model for what we could make out of Quantifly. We also looked for informations concerning Intellectual Property, in order to know what to do if our results were good enough to make a startup out of Quantifly.

Learn more about the Entrepreunarial aspects of our project

Events

We organized and attended to a lot of events during the year. Whether it is iGEMers Meetups, professional events, or even sports events that will help us raise money, our team was very active ! We loved participating to all of these events, and definitely keep some very good memories from them.

Learn more about our events

Collaborations

As we are quite a recent team in the Paris region, we tried to meet the other iGEM Teals and collaborate with them as much as we could. We had a lot of collaborations with different teams, mainly from the Paris area, the most important one being the organization of our biggest event, the European Experience.

Our collaborations