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iGEM Paris Team

Hello everyone! welcome to our wiki. It's the 3rd year for the Paris Team and we're still motivated to do our best. This year we have a team of 13 students (what a luck). We are 6 biologists, 2 mathematicians, 1 computer scientist, 1 sociologist, 1 infectiologist, 1 geneticist, and 1 chemist. We've got the best of the best of the best supervisors like Ariel Lindner, Guillaume Cambray and Samuel Bottani. So... let's the contest begin! (See our team here).

Message in a Bubble

We aimed developing a long distance communication system between gram-negative bacteria that is based on the ability of these organisms to produce Outer-Membrane Vesicles (OMVs). We designed a framework which can be easily expanded to a lot of different inputs/ouputs. We hope this standardized approach will increase our capacity to manipulate information and/or exchange it between bacteria. This can be used in any engineered biological process requiring transformation or a system of information transfer, including medical applications and bio-remediation.

We did our best to standardize:

1. the increase of vesicle production;
2. the system to address proteins to these vesicles;
3. their fusion with target bacteria. You can find detailed information in our OMV Project description or in our different parts.

By analogy to the Internet Protocol, we called our process a Bacterial Protocol. We found that the title Message in a bubble described it quite nicely. In a simple way, the comprehension of vesicles process sounds like a build of a bacteria language.

For more information on how we came up with this idea, please have a look at our brainstorming area.

Abstract

Message in a Bubble: a robust inter-cellular communication system based on outer membrane vesicles.

Sending a message across the ocean… Outer membrane vesicles (OMV), naturally produced by gram negative bacteria as E. Coli, are strong candidates for long-distance messaging. Our engineered communication platform consists of controlling OMV production by destabilizing membrane integrity through over-expression of specific periplasmic proteins (e.g., TolR). In order to control and modulate message content, we used fusions with OmpA signal sequence and the ClyA hemolysin as delivery tags. A targeting system was developed, based on the outer-membrane expression of Jun/Fos leucine zippers to control the vesicle flux between donor and recipient cells. Once received, the signal from incoming vesicles is transduced through a modified Fec pathway, whereby the receptor is provided by the OMV. Computational models provided insight to all of the above steps. Such reliable communications systems have wide biotechnological implications, ranging from targeted drugs delivery and detoxification to advanced division of labor or even cell-based computing.

Our sponsors

Visitors & Collaborations

With BCCS-Bristol , we shared our modeling part concerning the production of vesicles which is supposed to be complementary of their and we hope that we will be able to combine the two approach to make one big model of the production , adressing , and fusion of the vesicles.

Thank you Valencia !

News

• 28th August : new menu \o/ and 'breadcrumb'
• 16th August : 1st Biobrick ! [http://partsregistry.org/Part:BBa_K257001 g3p - BBa K257001 ]
• 30th July : Input Primers and Strain on the Wiki page here
• 23th July : First participation of the team in a popularization of science event in Paris.
• 22th July : Let's start our Informatic tool for Labs manipulation on iPhone. see here.
• 21th July : template site seems not to work well with IE and FF&Co, so we've got to change some BG but it's not essential right now
• 20th July : Team image presentation is finish, now let's see what everyone gonna put in it.... Beginning of Labs work !! (finaly)
• 15th July : NoteBook works, now we've got to fill it with some writting
• 14th July : Hello ! The Wiki is under construction you may see some funny things, don't worry we'll be functional soon.