Team:Southampton

Project Description

As a new team to the iGEM competition, Southampton hopes to bring an innovative application of quorum sensing to the 2009 Jamboree. Using this method of bacterial communication, we have designed two systems, which demonstrate the classic games ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ and ‘Conway’s Game of Life’. We aim for these complementary systems to exhibit complex intercellular behaviours arising from the application of simple ‘game’ rules.

John Conway’s Game of Life is a popular representation of cellular automata. As a zero player game, it proceeds without further input once initiated. We intend to utilize the Game’s basic rules to develop a system on two separate plasmids that fluoresces in an imitation of the Game. Thereby we aim to initiate and thus control the creation of patterns produced by the oscillating bacteria.

‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ is a well-known two-person hand game whereby the players seek to produce a gesture that will defeat that of their opponent. By coordinating the promoters and operators of three different bacterial cells, we have designed a system where each bacterium can disable the primary plasmid of specific opponent cells, whilst simultaneously enduring the attacks of their rival cells. Our aim is to have no bias within the system so that the end result is not predetermined.

Team Mugshot

From The Left; Steph, Dani, Tom, Jon, Jo, Paul, Karolina, Claire, Rich.