The first ever Washington University iGEM team is composed of nine undergraduate juniors and seniors majoring in Biology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. Under the leadership of Dr. Blankenship (Biology and Chemistry departments), our team plans to synthetically regulate expression of the photosynthetic machinery, which we believe is a first for both iGEM and synthetic biology. To learn more about our highly motivated and well-trained team, please click here.
Project
Our goal for this project is to increase photosynthetic efficiency in the purple bacterium Rhodobacter Sphaeroides by altering the regulation of the light harvesting antenna LH2. This antenna complex surrounds and harvests photons for the reaction center, where light energy is converted to chemical energy. We plan to utilize a synthetic light sensing system that will result in an output of a low number of LH2 complexes at high light intensities and a greater number of LH2 complexes at low light intensities. This project is intended to serve as a proof in principle that light harvesting antenna sizes may be synthetically and dynamically tailored to incidental light intensity in order to increase photosynthetic efficiency in a bioreactor. To learn more about our project, please click here.
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