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Project Description

UNDER CONSTRUCTION DONT LOOK AT ME!!

Why we chose Bacterial Micro-Compartments

Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are endogenous platforms ideally suited for synthetic biology, as modular protein structures of relatively simple construction. Of the three known BMCs (carboxysomes, PDUs, and EUTs), EUTs were chosen as candidates for photo-mechanization due to their comparatively straightforward assembly. While carboxysomes and PDUs require precise ratios of coexpressed protein subunits to assemble, the ethanolamine utilizing microcompartments’ shell can form in vivo from a single subunit: EutS. Our research focused on the incorporation of azobenzene-sidechain noncanonical amino acids into the EutS protein, which was hypothesized to confer the nanocages with a photo-switchable function for assembly and disassembly.