Team:BGU ISRAEL/Collaborations
Collaboration
We have collaborate with several iGEM Teams:
Sonyeod - Korea
Scientific way:
Description:
" Bacteria is a vital decomposer in our everyday lives. It decomposes and recycles things that can be reused in the nature. Our team came to think that this beneficial bacterium might be a solution to the problem regarding increasing trash in the Earth. Of all projects attempting to solve trash problems, research about plastic degrading bacteria is the most popular. However, our team felt that the research has not been efficient enough and fast enough to solve the fundamental problem. Through this research, as a student, we hope to dedicate to what our society is facing. The fundamental purpose of the research is to generate a more efficient and fast plastic degrading process through the plastic degrading bacteria and make plastic bacteria practically usable. The current bacteria are slow in degrading speed and low in degrading quantity, so our research hopes to find better solution for efficiency."
KoreaSonyeod is a high school team working also on degradation of plastic. Due to the fact that our team is really concerned about the accumulation of plastic waste, we ventured to help teams working on research in the field. Therefore, we contacted team KoreaSonyeod and offered them our help. KoreaSonyeod team works with a different enzyme then ours. In their project, PET first bond is broken by PETase and MHETase leading to the same two products as ours- Terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. From that point we mentored KoreaSonyeod team about the detection of Terephthalic acid, we suggest them to use our TPA detection protocol and send it to them. We also noticed there are other groups working with same enzymes as theirs. We offered KoreaSonyeod to use the algorithm we have used, that makes rational mutations in order to stabilize a protein and improve his activity. We sent them the structures and sequences of 7 improve variants of the PETase protein, as they request, for a synthesis and continue of activity tests compare to the wild type protein.
The Technion - Israel
We collaborated with the Technion in a scientific way and also, we participated in a mini Jamboree hosted by the Technion team
The scientific way:
Description:
"Chemotaxis is the movement of bacteria in response to chemical stimuli. This process is mediated by chemoreceptors – membrane proteins that bind to different substances with high specificity. Project S.Tar offers a way to harness the chemotaxis system. By changing the ligand binding domain of the E. Coli Tar-chemoreceptor, we show that bacteria can be programmed to respond to different substances. As an implementation of our system we introduce a novel method for the detection of materials, such as pollutants and allergens, using a microfluidics chip. The chip’s design provides signal amplification while maintaining user-friendly experience."
We learned that their project is about chemotaxis applied in E. coli. After reading articles about P. putida kt2440 we discovered that it has a similar chemotaxis mechanism to that of E. coli used by the Technion (Ditty et al 1998). The Technion team offered to improve our Bacterium's chemotaxis mechanism though a system they are using, who makes a specific mutation in the receptor's domains. The mutation enables us to change the receptor's ligand to one of our choosing. In our design PET's first bond is being broken by the extracellular protein LC-cutinase, into two products- Terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. The products are then consumed by either P. putida kt2440 or E. coli. Terephthalic acid is transferred into P. putida kt2440 by tripartite tricarboxylate transporter and Ethylene glycol is diffused into E. coli.
We chose to use these products as ligand for the Technion's team improved receptors. As a result, the bacterium could detect these products in the solvent and migrate towards them overcoming the diffusion's limiting rate. This mechanism can expedite the degradation rate of the PET products and make our system more efficient.
We got the structures and the sequences of 19 variants for ethylene glycol receptor and 9 variants for Terephthalic acid receptor. Unfortunately, we couldn’t synthesize these receptors and check their activity, due to time and finance limits but we thought on a theoretical way use them.
We wrote an assay of Terephthalic acid detection that can support the examination of that process. In the future, we also plan to find an ethylene glycol detection protocol.
References
- Ditty, J. L., Grimm, A. C., & Harwood, C. S. (1998). Identification of a chemotaxis gene region from Pseudomonas putida. FEMS microbiology letters, 159(2), 267-273.
Mini Jamboree:
On September the 29th, we were invited along with the other Israeli iGEM teams to the Technion for Mini Jamboree Event. Each team presented their project before a panel of judges that asked thoughtful questions and offered tips for improvement and better preparation for the Giant Jamboree in Boston.
XMU - China
Newsletter:
XMU_China 2016 iGEM team has created a team's information exchange platform- Newsletter. The newsletter enabled iGEM teams from all over the world to write about their project and discuss issues concerning it and synthetic biology in general. This year they chose to publish a single issue composed of five different parts. We were happy to collaborate and publish description about our project in the introduction part and to present our computer game in the survey part of the issue.
Link- https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx7YhWYS6fsSVzRlanphVnJ4WU0/view
XMU-China also helped us to examine international solution for plastic waste. The team send us a paper about the common ways of treating the plastic waste In China.
Summary
In the time we worked on our project we contacted many iGEM teams in order to get familiar with their work. We sent our computer game to many teams all over the world by mail and offered to contact us if and advise or assistance is needed. Some of the teams we contacted are- Tianjin team who also deals with plastic waste; we took a survey sent by the Manchester team; we participated in Tel-Hai's team "65 roses" camping, and many more.
Address:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben Gurion 1, Beer Sheva 8410501, Israel
Mail: igembgu2016@gmail.com
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