Earlier this summer, we have discussed to explore different kind of biotech applications using synthetic biology. Apparently, many of these applications were limited by the availability of suitable chassis for the particular process involved. Therefore, the Edinburgh Overgraduate iGEM team decided to expand the availability of chassis for applications which needs specialised host organism: (1) Sustainable production of biomaterials through photosynthesis, (2) degradation of various pollutants/toxic wastes, and (3) robust production of secondary metabolites. Thus, we explore suitable organisms for the tasks and develop the means to do genetic manipulation and create a collection of necessary parts library. In the process, we realized that by domesticating new organisms as chassis, we open up new risks and safety challenges towards users and environment. Therefore, we also developed a tool (software) to screen for potential risk from the organism’s database of toxic secondary metabolites.
Synechocystis sp.
Rhodococcus jostii RHA1
Penicillium roqueforti
The continuously growing field of industrial biotechnology has incited the replacement of non-renewable processes with more energy-efficient ones. Central to this is the use of genetically modified organisms modified with recombinant DNA technology for a wide variety of applications, ranging from the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals to fuels and bioremediation [1]. These technologies and applications are largely dependent on the use of well-characterised industrial host organisms including Escherichia coli and Sacharomyces cerevisiae. However, such strains are not always the optimal choice for particular processes due to inherent metabolic limitations or a lack of consensus between the engineered components introduced into the host from a heterologous organism for the particular bioprocess.
While the well-characterised E. coli and S. cerevisiae have a host of molecular biology tools available for engineering them since they have been domesticated (they have been vastly changed from their wild-type and adapted to laboratory conditions), they come with distinct limitations, such as the inability to make the post-translational modifications found in eukaryotic proteins, with a high potential for protein misfolding, aggregation and degradation, besides incomplete translation due to different patterns of codon usage to eukaryotes [2]. Using native producer organisms in biotechnology may lead to higher productivities, but these non-model organisms often lack well-characterised genetic engineering tools, which may present difficulties in optimising and controlling metabolic pathways. This presents a major barrier to the widespread use of these organisms as biofactories.
The Edinburgh Overgraduate iGEM team will address those challenges by domesticating the desired host strains, applying synthetic biology (synbio) genetic engineering standards to the design of protein expression and metabolic engineering systems in a number of non-model organisms and characterising the behaviour of these standardised systems in a number of host strains with high potential for industrial applications. Furthermore, although it has its limitations in bacteria, we will include the CRISPR-Cas9 platform to assess its utility in these organisms as it is a potentially useful tool to have a better control of genomic perturbations and maximise those optimal expression systems and metabolic pathways. Through our project, the path is being paved so that other participants in the synbio community will more easily access these organisms in the laboratory, accelerating the understanding of these organisms and increasing the list of strains that are suitable for the manufacture of relevant products, including those that address global conservation challenges.
We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be consist, accurate and unambiguous in your achievements.
Judges like to read your wiki and know exactly what you have achieved. This is how you should think about these sections; from the point of view of the judge evaluating you at the end of the year.
iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you thought about your project and what works inspired you.
See how other teams have described and presented their projects:
We are the University of Edinburgh Overgraduate iGEM Team, competing in the new application track in iGEM 2016. read more
School of Biological Sciences The University of Edinburgh King's Buildings Edinburgh EH9 3JF, United Kingdom
Email: edigemmsc@ed.ac.uk
