"
Team:TzuChiU Formosa/Project
From 2009.igem.org
| Home | The Team | The Project | Parts Submitted to the Registry | Modeling | Notebook |
|---|
Contents |
Overall project
Your abstract
Project Details
Project 1:
Though nowadays scientists know better about the development of arteriosclerosis, there is still no a wonderful method to inhibit the course of disease. From many papers, we learn that protein ABCA1 play an important role in release cholesterol in ox-LEL from macrophage to HDL. Furthermore, some papers show that improving ABCA1 expression in macrophage helps inhibit arteriosclerosis. Therefore, we want to make a macrophage that has more ABCA1 gene copies to try to solve the problem.
We have the idea of getting the human ABCA1 cDNA and transfected into the human macrophage and made it sensitive to cholesterol and over expressed it when necessary and aim to reduce the blood plague problem.
We are trying to make an expression vector which can expresses human ABCA1. After that, we will send the vector to mice macrophage cell line by electroporation.
To detect whether the vector expresses or not, we will first use RT-PCR to see if there are more ABCA1 mRNA in macrophage with the vector than normal macrophage. If the result is positive, we achieve our goal.
Later, if the whole experiment is carried out smoothly, we want to further observe whether the transformed macrophage trulyy has better ability to release cholesterol from macrophage.
Project 2
No more electricity, No more pollution; The Midnight Apollo!
In Taipei, on average 768 mega watt of electricity for streetlamp was consumed every night (Department Public works, Taipei City government). It is beyond our imagination how much energy was consumed for the whole world. In Taiwan there are 9 power stations generated by coal, and produce 269.1 million tons of CO2 every year (based on data from CARMA), Power stations are major causes for global warming. Therefore, we would like to create” biolight” that can reduce CO2 generation and attenuate degree of global warming.
We plan to create a new organism that doesn’t need electricity and cause no pollution, we named “The Midnight Apollo”. “The Midnight Apollo” will be turned on when surrounding area turns dark and will be turned off automatically when the environment is bright. The idea is based on two systems, Cph8 and aeoquorin/GFP. The Cph8 is regulated by the visible light that can activate protein translation of an illuminating system. This illuminating system use aeoquorin/GFP to light up the environment.
We hope The Midnight Apollo could be applied in producing energy-saved Bio-streetlamp, emergency Biolighting, or Biosearchlight.
