Team:Toulouse France/Description

iGEM Toulouse 2016

iGEM Toulouse Team presents
Paleotilis, a shield for the Lascaux cave

Back to the origins

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What if iGEM stepped 18,000 years back?

At that time, cavemen painted extraordinary frescoes on the Lascaux cave (France). The cave remained stable until its discovery in 1940, which deeply disturbed its ecosystem. It was closed shortly after mainly because of contamination by fungi that cause colored spots on the frescoes.Nowadays, mechanical and chemical solutions are daily used and the cave is still in danger due to their limited efficiency.

At iGEM Toulouse, we thought about an innovative biological solution based on the last advances in synthetic biology. It consists in an engineered Bacillus subtilis bacterium that develops from bacterial organisms present in the cave. It releases antifungals when in close viscinity of fungi. Since we care about our environment, an inducible riboswitch-based double toxin/antitoxin system was created to preventDNA transmission and a physical device was designed to confine our strain.

Project

The project Paleotilis is composed of three modules: Predation, Antifungals, and Confinement. By following this link you will learn more about these constructions.