Team:Wash U

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Revision as of 22:07, 19 September 2009

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Our Team

Our Project

Team

The first ever Washington University iGEM team is composed of nine undergraduate juniors and seniors majoring in Biology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. Under the leadership of Dr. Blankenship (Biology and Chemistry departments), our team plans to synthetically regulate expression of the photosynthetic machinery, which we believe is a first for both iGEM and synthetic biology. To learn more about our highly motivated and well-trained team, please click here.

Project Abstract

Photosynthetic light harvesting antennas function to collect light and transfer energy to a reaction center for photochemistry. Phototrophs evolved large antennas to compete for photons in natural environments where light is scarce. Consequently, cells at the surface of photobioreactors over-absorb light, leading to attenuated photobioreactor light penetration and starving cells on the interior of photons. This reduction of photosynthetic productivity has been identified as the primary impediment to improving photobioreactor efficiency. While reduction of antenna size improves photosynthetic productivity, current approaches to this end uniformly truncate antennas and are difficult to manipulate from the perspective of bioengineering. We aim to create a modifiable system to optimize antenna size throughout the bioreactor by utilizing a synthetic regulatory mechanism that correlates expression of the pucB/A LH2 antenna genes with incident light intensity. This new application of synthetic biology serves to transform the science of antenna reduction into the engineering of antenna optimization. To learn more about our project, please click here.

What Is iGEM?

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the [http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page Registry of Standard Biological Parts]. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.
The burgeoning field of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology Synthetic Biology] is the culmination of the previous thirty years of research into recombinant DNA and biological engineering technology. It is fundamentally about the union of biology and engineering, thereby encouraging the collaboration of geneticists, molecular biologists, biochemists, and biomedical, chemical, and computer science engineers. Researchers in this field mainly seek to A) design and construct new biological parts, devices and systems or B) re-design existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes.

Contact

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns at washu.igem@gmail.com
Or feel free to leave a comment on our wall.

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 Photosynthetic light harvesting antennas function to collect light and transfer energy to a reaction center for photochemistry. Phototrophs evolved large antennas to compete for photons in natural environments where light is scarce.  Consequently, cells at the surface of photobioreactors over-absorb light, leading to attenuated photobioreactor light penetration and starving cells on the interior of photons. This reduction of photosynthetic productivity has been identified as the primary impediment to improving photobioreactor efficiency.  While reduction of antenna size improves photosynthetic productivity, current approaches to this end uniformly truncate antennas and are difficult to manipulate from the perspective of bioengineering. We aim to create a modifiable system to optimize antenna size throughout the bioreactor by utilizing a synthetic regulatory mechanism that correlates expression of the pucB/A LH2 antenna genes with incident light intensity. This new application of synthetic biology serves to transform the science of antenna reduction into the engineering of antenna optimization.   To learn more about our project, please click [https://2009.igem.org/Team:Wash_U/Project here].