Team:USP UNIFESP-Brazil

AlgAranha Team USP_UNIFESP-Brazil

iGEM 2016



Unfortunately, we were not able to achieve the end goal of silk production in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, but we managed to do some nice things (and get a SILVER MEDAL!) Here you can find stuff about:

  • Our DIY Centrifuge
  • Our efforts to assemble the spider silk genes at the USER multimerization part of our lab notebook
  • Transforming Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to produce heterologous proteins, with results and protocols

    • We are a multidisciplinary team from São Paulo, Brazil, with students of architecture, biology, biomedical sciences, social sciences and more, from the universities USP, UNESP and UNIFESP. The team was originated from the synthetic biology club (SynBio Brasil),which is an independent group that works promoting synbio and open science awareness and education. Since 2012, different club members have organized themselves to take part in iGEM competition.

    This year, our project was based on the heterologous expression of spider silk protein in the microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We named it AlgAranha, a combination of the portuguese words for algae and spider. Besides the goal of producing enzybiotics and monomers of spider silk, we aim to achieve an improvement of Chlamydomonas as a synbio chassis. Moreover, the team is involved with open hardware developement and promotion and synthetic biology popularization, helping to promote the synthetic biology culture in Brazil, raising awareness and engaging the public.

    Scanning electron microscope image, showing Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular flagellate used as a model system in molecular genetics work and flagellar motility studies. Author: Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility, Dartmouth College