Natural Competence

From 2009.igem.org

This is concerned with developing a system which is naturally competent. This is to be done by introducing com genes taken from naturally competent strains of Acinetobacter and Streptococcus into a suitable vector imparting natural competence and readiness of the bacterium to acquire genes. Induction of competence will thus enable the bacteria to take up naked DNA from its surroundings which will greatly facilitate transformation experiments.

Uptake of DNA is a highly complex process requiring large host of proteins involved in DNA translocation, pore forming proteins etc. We have identified several genes essential for DNA uptake in Acinetobacter and Streptococcus. These include comE comF, comB, comC and comP from the Acinetobacter BD413 and comA, comB genes from Streptococcus pneumoniaeR6

This has several applications in bacterial systems such as acquisition of foreign genetic material not only to study the natural evolutionary processes and genomic diversity, but also exploitation of this particular gene behavior into automated genetic framework leading to uptake of desired genes in vitro. We are trying to contribute these particular competence factor encoding genes to the standard biobrick registry through PCR amplification, cloning into existing expression vectors and finally molding them into the biobrick format.However, realizing the natural sequences of the genes and presence of some undesired restriction sites we will try to make them Bioscaffold parts. This attempt will be the first of its kind where natural competence factors could be made available to the biobrick registry which will be of versatile use.