Team:BCCS-Bristol

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Revision as of 14:57, 26 June 2009

BCCS-Bristol
iGEM 2009

Background

The [http://bccs.bris.ac.uk/ Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences (BCCS)] is a new highly interdisciplinary centre for training and research funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC). It is a major collaboration across 4 faculties within the [http://www.bris.ac.uk/ University of Bristol].

Both the BCCS and iGEM share an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving and a culture of communication between previously disparate scientific fields. Furthermore, the BCCS aims to nurture the next generation of scientists in complexity, fitting with iGEM's ethos of introducing undergraduates to cutting edge science. This year the team is made up of advisors and students from the BCCS, Engineering Mathematics, Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.

By taking part in iGEM the BCCS and Bristol University hopes to:

Build links between departments and people within and outside the university,
Demonstrate the effectiveness of such collaborations,
Attempt to apply, where appropriate, techniques from the field of Complexity Science.

Meetings

26th June 2009

Bacterial diagnosis

Ollie and Thanasis spent some time this week looking into whether we could use bacteria to detect and report on the state of an organism. It now seems we have now dropped the idea on the grounds it is too similar to projects attempted in previous years (NYMU, KULeuven) and would require licensing. However there was a suggestion that this idea could be taken in the direction of sequence based toggle switches to carry out a (more complicated) decision tree based diagnosis.

Magnetic bacteria

Petros prepared some slides on the biological feasibility of engineering E.coli to synthesize magnetosome (Copy of the presentation found here)

Links to the papers cited in the presentation can be found here:

[http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v2/n3/full/nrmicro842.html Magnetosome formation in prokaryotes]
[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr078258w Magnetotactic bacteria and magnetosomes]
[http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/M106408200 A Magnetosome-specific GTPase from the Magnetic Bacterium Magnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1]
[http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/10/4573 A large gene cluster encoding several magnetosome proteins is conserved in different species of magnetotactic bacteria]
[http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/277/37/33559 The Escherichia coli Cytochrome c Maturation (Ccm) System Does Not Detectably Attach Heme to Single Cysteine Variants of an Apocytochrome c]
[http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/75/12/3972 Toward Cloning of the Magnetotactic Metagenome: Identification of Magnetosome Island Gene Clusters in Uncultivated Magnetotactic Bacteria from Different Aquatic sediments]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18537832 Genetics and cell biology of magnetosome formation in magnetotactic bacteria]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16303747 Complete Genome Sequence of the Facultative Anaerobic Magnetotactic Bacterium Magnetospirillum sp. strain AMB-1]

Steve and Emily looked into possible applications of magnetotaxis. These papers seem particularly interesting:

[http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/89/233904/1 Controlled manipulation and actuation of micro-objects with magnetotactic bacteria]
[http://wiki.polymtl.ca/nano/images/0/00/C-2006-MTB-IARP-Sylvain.pdf Towards Autonomous Bacterial Microrobots]
[http://www.polymtl.ca/recherche/rc/en/professeurs/details.php?NoProf=122&showtab=PUB Other publications by Sylvain Martel]

Vesicles

Tom gave a presentation developing the idea of communication and self-assembly using vesicles.

18th June 2009

The shortlist was down to 7 projects and 3 of those made it to the next round as voted by the present audience. These are as follows (project title, (votes received)):

Magnetic Bacteria (10)
Bacterial Vesicles (6)
Non-Invasive Reporting/Switches & Sensors (6)
Genome Updates & version control (5)
Host/Parasite Symbiosis (3)
Bacterial Computation
RNA Editing

Thus the top three were chosen to review the literature further and assess the possibility of carrying each out in 3 months.

11th June 2009

Kick off meeting. Narrowed down ideas from ~15 to 7. See Team:BCCS-Bristol/Brainstorming.

2nd June 2009

Presentation of initial ideas at MCB2009.

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 ==== Magnetic bacteria ====
-Petros prepared some slides on the biological feasibility of engineering E.coli to synthesize magnetosome [https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2009/0/09/BCCS_magnetoiGEM2009.pdf Copy of the presentation found here]
+Petros prepared some slides on the biological feasibility of engineering E.coli to synthesize magnetosome [https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2009/0/09/BCCS_magnetoiGEM2009.pdf (Copy of the presentation found here)]
 Links to the papers cited in the presentation can be found here: