Team:Technion Israel/Description
Our vision
Imagine if you could direct entire bacterial populations towards a specific location,
this ability could have amazing applications such as research, bioremediation, substance
detection and much more!
Project S.Tar aims to give the iGEM community this ability, with the hope that future
teams may utilize it and find it useful. In addition, as an implementation of this
ability, we designed FlashLab – a biological detection tool.
S.Tar
FlashLab
Chemotaxis
Chemotaxis is the movement of an organism in response to an external chemical stimulus.
This system is used by many organisms to navigate their
immediate environment
The E. coli chemotaxis system is considered a model system that illustrates some of the core principles
of chemotactic movement (1).
A detailed explanation on the chemotaxis system and the intercellular processes involved can be
found here.
Fig. 1: Scheme of chemotaxis concept.
S.Tar – In control of chemotaxis
Project Super Tar - S.Tar in short, is designed to be a novel broadband platform for controlled chemotaxis.
The foundation of our project is the E. coli Tar chemoreceptor or more specifically, its ligand binding
domain (LBD).
We show that by mutating the native Tar LBD (2) or by interchanging it with that of other
receptors (3), the E. coli chemotaxis system can be programmed to respond to completely new ligands.
Using S.Tar, scientists will be able to control the movement of bacteria and direct them towards or away
from a target material.
Fig. 2: S.Tar project - Programming the chemoreceptors to respond to new ligands by modifying the ligand binding domain.
FlashLab – A S.Tar detector
As an application of our system, we have designed FlashLab - a user friendly fluidic chip, which utilizes the high sensitivity of the chemotactic response. FlashLab is a simple and low cost platform for the detection of any chemoeffector, using S.Tar bacteria.
Fig. 3: Flash Lab - our designed detection chip.
References:
1. Bi, S. and Lai, L., 2015. Bacterial chemoreceptors and chemoeffectors. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 72(4), pp.691-708.
2. Moretti, R., Bender, B.J., Allison, B. and Meiler, J., 2016. Rosetta and the Design of Ligand Binding Sites. Computational Design
of Ligand Binding Proteins, pp.47-62.
3. Reyes‐Darias, J.A., Yang, Y., Sourjik, V. and Krell, T., 2015. Correlation between signal input and output in PctA and PctB amino
acid chemoreceptor of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Molecular microbiology, 96(3), pp.513-525.
