Team:Utah State

The aim of the Utah State University iGEM project is to develop improved upstream and downstream processing strategies for manufacturing cellular products using the standardized BioBrick system. First, we altered the broad-host range vector pRL1383a to comply with BioBrick standards and enable use of BioBrick constructs in organisms like Pseudomonas putida, Rhodobacter sphaeroides, and Synechocystis PCC6803. This vector will facilitate exploitation of advantageous characteristics of these organisms, such as photosynthetic carbon assimilation. Following expression, product recovery poses a difficult and expensive challenge. Downstream processing of cellular compounds, like polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), commonly represents more than half of the total production expense. To counter this problem, secretion-promoting BioBrick devices were constructed through genetic fusion of signal peptides with protein-coding regions. To demonstrate this, the secretion of PHA granule-associated proteins and their affinity to PHA was investigated. Project success will facilitate expression and recovery of BioBrick-coded products in multiple organisms.

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