Team:British Columbia/Project

From 2009.igem.org

(Difference between revisions)

Revision as of 02:45, 22 October 2009

'Overview of the Traffic Light Biosensor:
A flexible, modular, and transparent system for multi-level assessment of variable inputs.'

Depending on the concentration of a particular substrate in the medium, E. coli will respond accordingly by producing different coloured fluorescence proteins. A diagram would look like this:

The E. coli Traffic Light Biosensor is composed of three major subparts: variable arabinose-inducible promoters, RNA lock and key system, and reverse antisense promoters for input detection, color activation and traffic light switching respectively.

Here is the design for how we can build our "traffic light".

Schematic black-box representation of the E. coli Biosensor that detects various concentration inputs and color outputs. The idea is discrete analog outputs based on a user-specified threshold for each range of concentration.

Please go to the sub pages for more information on the subparts:
1. A variable sensitivity biosensor
2. A lock-and-key logic gate system]
3. An antisense "off" switch

Miscellaneous Data

We also produced a couple tools to help out the project:

Biobricks.zip - Fasta file containing every biobrick from Here

http://www.pkts.ca/bb - Biobrick digestion engine - enter the name of a biobrick plasmid and biobrick insert, and this will show you the product of an EcoRI and PstI digestion/ligation as a FASTA file (suitable for viewing in your favorite program).

http://www.pkts.ca/brickedit/ - Biobrick picture maker - enter a sequence of letters corresponding to the icons, and the program will produce a concatenated file of the Biobrick.

Links

http://rna.tbi.univie.ac.at/ - a package of prediction tools for RNA structures; we used RNAfold to annotate the key and lock structures

http://mobyle.pasteur.fr/cgi-bin/portal.py - a set of web-accessible bioinformatics tools including Mfold, which determines 2D RNA structure and draws it

http://frodo.wi.mit.edu/ - Primer3, a primer design program

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 == 'Overview of the Traffic Light Biosensor: <br> A ''flexible'', ''modular'', and ''transparent'' system for multi-level assessment of variable inputs.' ==
-Biosensors have a diverse variety of real-world functions, ranging from measuring blood glucose levels in diabetes patients to assessing environmental contamination of trace toxins. The majority of these sensors are highly specific for a single input, and their outputs often require specialized equipment such as surface plasmon resonance chips. Our project aims to create a biosensor that recognizes a specific target and alters its output fluorescence from green, to yellow, to red as a function of concentration up to critical levels (hence, a biological "traffic light").
+Depending on the concentration of a particular substrate in the medium, E. coli will respond accordingly by producing different coloured fluorescence proteins. A diagram would look like this:
 [[Image:E_coli_Traffic_Light_Subprojects.png|center|thumb||400px|The ''E. coli'' Traffic Light Biosensor is composed of three major subparts: variable arabinose-inducible promoters, RNA lock and key system, and reverse antisense promoters for input detection, color activation and traffic light switching respectively.]]
-[[Image:E_coli_Traffic_Light_Step_by_Step.png|thumb|center|700px|Schematic black-box representation of the E. coli Biosensor that detects various concentration inputs and color outputs. The idea is discrete analog outputs based on a user-specified threshold for each range of concentration.]]
+Here is the design for how we can build our "traffic light".
+[[Image:E_coli_Traffic_Light_Step_by_Step.png|thumb|center|700px|Schematic black-box representation of the E. coli Biosensor that detects various concentration inputs and color outputs. The idea is discrete analog outputs based on a user-specified threshold for each range of concentration.]]
-Subparts:<br>
+Please go to the sub pages for more information on the subparts:<br>
 . [https://2009.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/pBAD A variable sensitivity biosensor]<br>
 . [https://2009.igem.org/Team:British_Columbia/LockandKey A lock-and-key logic gate system]]<br>