Team:BIOTEC Dresden/Brainstorm

Brainstorming

We had various brain storming sessions, wherein we discussed topics varying from DNA computing to bacteria turning dust to gold. We spoke to some experts in the fields and after many meetings and discussions, we settled on the factory-on-a-chip idea.

Some of the initial ideas and discussions were:

Biodegrading of electronic waste

Following the upcoming idea of bioremediation we come up with the idea of uranium, the main component of electronic waste, degrading bacteria, the Geobacter species which is a genus of proteobacteria, anaerobic in nature. This bacteria’s ability to consume oil based pollutants, carbon-dioxide rated radioactive materials, petroleum spills and precipitation of uranium from underground water has been the main topic of interest to use it in our daily life.

Magnetotactic bacteria

Magnetotactic bacteria are a special kind of bacteria that exhibit the ability to organize themselves along the magnetic field lines of Earth by the help of special organelles called magnetosomes containing magnetic crystals. Its vivid application in the field of Biotechnology in bacterial magnetite over synthetic magnetite gave it a important viewpoint in research.

DNA computing

The new way of computing in the 21st century has been deviating from silicon based computer technologies to a form of computing using DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology. Initially developed in 1994 this field has expanded a lot replacing parallel computing with DNA chips with much lower power consumption.

Bacteria turning dust to gold

It has been a splendid invention in the year 2006 by some Australian scientists in finding out bacteria known as Rafstonia metalldurans which is said to play a important role in forming gold grains from simple dust particles. Generally the bacteria are capable of accumulating toxic gold complexes into metallic gold nano particles which contribute for growth of gold grains.

Algal Adhesion

Adhesion has been a important aspect in our daily life and in recent studies it has been found that bioadhesives i.e. Natural polymers from biological organisms like bacteria, algae etc are a better choice over synthetic adhesives. Algal adhesion has come into application in tooth cavity filling, retaining loosely bound soil from erosion and others. (K.Kendall, 2001)

Gene Oscillators Gene oscillators is a new idea in the field of synthetic biology comprising coupled positive and negative feedback loop (Mathew R Bennett et al. ). This type of an oscillator helps in the study of a transcriptional regulatory network generating a phenotypic expression, leading to the development of various gene circuits (Gardner TS et. al., 2000, Elowitz MBb et. al. 2000, Fung E et. al. 2005)

Bioremediation

Bioremediation is a process of retaining valuable things of nature altered by contamination by using biological bodies like micro-organisms, fungi, plants or enzymes from them. Genetically Engineered micro-organisms have been used in bioremediation applications like waste management in soil, groundwater and sludge environments which can be a potential outlook for solving serious problems of pollution. (Gary S Sayler, 2000)

Nano-machines

Machines as little as one can think of the nanoscale are simply the nanomachines, the new revolution for future development. Built from single atoms theses machines are strong enough to bring about certain change in structures which can be used to cure diseases. (Brent Silby Department of Philosophy, University of Canterbury). The discovery of the carbon nanotubes is one of the great examples of nanomachines that has been built with the help of biological parts like DNA wrapped around graphite bodies in the shape of tubes.

Invitro expression in GUVs

Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs) are special kind of vesicles of about 50microns in diameter. As per the experimental results these vesicles can be obtained after 2 minutes, prepared from different phospholipids, including L-alpha-phosphatidylcholine (lecithin), dipalmitoleoyl L-alpha-phosphatidylcholine, and beta-arachidonoyl gamma-palmitoyl L-alpha-phosphatidylcholine in the presence of certain buffers of pH ranging from 7.0 to 11.0 of ionic strength 50mM. (A Moscho, O Orwar, D T Chiu, B P Modi, and R N Zare, 1996)

Nano wire assembly

From the upcoming field of nanotechnology, nanowires form an important aspect in present scenario of research. With a diameter range in nanometers these wires are produced by electro-deposition. Applications of nanowires include Gallium Nitride nanowires used for realizing high-performance transistors, light-emitting diodes, and chemical or biological sensors.(A. Motayed et. al. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, USA)

Flavonoides production

Flavonoids, better known as Vitamin P or citrin are generally extracted from plant secondary metabolites. The increasing knowledge of flavonoid biosynthesis and the important function of flavonoid compounds in plants and in human are excellent targets for metabolic engineering. Recent strategies have included introducing novel structural or regulatory genes, and the antisense or sense suppression of genes in these pathways.( Gert Forkmann and Stefan Martens, TU München, 2001 )

Drug Delivery System

Drug delivery is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals (M. N. V. Ravi Kumar, 2008) Drug delivery technologies modify drug release profile, absorption, distribution and elimination for the benefit of improving product efficacy and safety, as well as patient convenience and compliance. Drug deliveries have been successfully implemented in detecting cancer cells, used in food and pharmaceutical industries, diagnosis etc.

Silver Binding Peptide

Various studies have shown the crystallization of silver on certain micro organisms. This is shown to take place by the nucleation of silver nano particles by a silver binding peptide present within the bacterial species of E. coli having the plasmid pMG101 which have the silver resistance genes (sil). (Amit Gupta, Le T. Phung, Diane E. Taylor and Simon Silver, 2001). The nucleation of silver nano particles help in the formation of quatum dots which can be used to tag bio-molecules in vivo.

PoPs measurement

Polymerase per second (PoPs) is a measuring parameter which defines the level of transcription as the number of RNA polymerase molecules that pass a point on DNA each second. Theoretically it is possible to combine devices that send and receive signals to produce gene expression systems able to predict quantitative behavior of the system. We made an enthusiastic approach to develop such a system using Flp recombinases.