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Team:Alberta
From 2009.igem.org
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BioBytesAt present, the cost to synthesize DNA has been continually dropping and therefore its availability is exponentially growing. However, the ability to put pieces of DNA together has not been able to keep up. Present methods take a considerable amount of time to piece DNA together, making large constructs incredibly difficult to build. The University of Alberta 2009 iGEM team would like to introduce the BioBytes Chromosome Assembly System. The method refers to a mechanism for rapid and reliable construction of plasmids (i.e. artificial gene sets) in vitro. It allows for the assembly of components in hours rather than in days and we hope to see it become a valuable tool for any molecular biologist. Furthermore we have adapted our approach for Biofabrication by developing a robot which can use our method for automated assembly. Finally, microfluidics have been used to miniaturize construction allowing for additional validation for automated production of constructs. The method can be applied to numerous different applications, however, its greatest application is to the assembly of entire genomes. For this reason we have provided a detailed explanation on the requirements of constructing a minimal genome including an in silico method for identifying essential genes in any organism, and a theoretical design of replacing the host chromosome with the new genome. |
The Minimal Genome ProjectThe minimal E. coli genome has been a holy grail of biology for a number of years. E. coli is the most widely used cellular research tool by the molecular biology community. Since scientific research is based upon reductionism and simplification for understanding, a simplified version of an experimental model organism such as E. coli is, in principle, preferred as a chassis for experimentation. To reduce the E. coli genome to roughly 10% its original size shows a great simplification of this model organism. To create such an organism, we plan on building an artificial E. coli chromosome using the BioBytes chromosome assembly system and inserting it into living E. coli. We then intend to remove the host chromosome by making it incapable of division. This allows only the artificial, inserted chromosome to propagate through multiple generations as the cells grow and divide. This is markedly different than the current, time-consuming method of knocking out inessential genes, one at a time, in an effort to produce the minimal genome. It is this difference that we hope to exploit in our attempt to win the race to produce the minimal E. coli genome. |
Our Team's AchievementsThroughout our efforts we have made many accomplishments. These include:
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