Team:Leiden/rpm tekst

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RPM

Random Positioning Machine

To be able to engineer an organism which can thrive on Mars, many factors need to be accounted for such as radiation, low temperature and partial gravity. Since Mars has about 0.4 times the Earth's gravity, gravity dependent processes could be severely affected. Gravity is dominant on large scales, and can seriously affect bacterial colony development, as is well known from previous studies (add reference of Sjoerd here, about the different expressed promoters).
The Random Positioning Machine (RPM), developed by Airbus Defence and Space, can help us out by simulating partial earth gravity by constantly varying the orientation of bacterial colonies. It moves in such a way that Earth gravity, constantly pulling on the colony from a different direction, averages out to 0.4G.
By isolating the RNA from bacteria grown at 0.4G, and performing/followed by RNA-seq, we will be able to see changes in promoter/gene activity compared to 1G (Earth gravity). Our goal is to find a promoter which is upregulated under partial Earth gravity and create a biobrick of this.