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Team:ULB-Brussels/Project/Perspectives
From 2009.igem.org
GluColi: a future alternative to toxic glues?
Glue has become a material of everyday life but we have to know that common glues contain Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). These substances are air pollutants and toxic. [19] [20] [21] For example, cyanoacrylate commonly sold under trade names like super glue can cause various toxic issues depending on their precise composition, [22].
According to Yves Brun, Indiana University biologist, concerning Caulobacter crescentus’s glue: ”This natural, non-toxic glue [...], has the strongest adhesion force of any known natural material. Unlike commercial super glues, which are often toxic, it sticks well under water, even salt water, and, thus, has a wide range of potential applications ”, [13].
Indeed, succeeding in the production of our GluColi could offer a wide range of useful applications.
That could cover fields ranging from medical purposes to ship repairing and automotive or aeronautic industry.
Bone reconstructive surgery has lead to a large demand for bone graft, [26], [27]. Consequently, synthetic bone graft substitutes have been developped with mixed success and surgical acceptance. Bone engineering has still lots of challenges to cope with. Surgical adhesives are part of this field of research but toxic issues are sometimes reported. Looking for new adhesives is today of great interest [28]. In that, GluColi may play an interesting role.
GluColi and a free-antibiotics alternative
There is no Ethic Comity at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Medecine. However the governing body of the ULB supported us in the achievment of our project.
In this work, we intended to be as far as possible aware of some ethical issues, in particular the use of antibiotics and the toxicity of the current adhesives. Antibiotics are used to select all types of plasmidic vectors in bacteria which is a significant concern in industrial cultures producing recombinant proteins or DNA. As plasmid-free cells grow faster than plasmid-carrying cells, the yield and the production reproducibility of recombinant molecules are significantly lowered in the absence of plasmid selection by the appropriate antibiotic.
To overcome the plasmid instability, many antibiotic resistance genes are used as selectable markers in fermentation processes. Antibiotics are expensive and they pose safety problems: they contaminate the production product. [23] [24] The Belgian company Delphi Genetics has developed a strategy called StabyTM system which relies on the use of poison-antidote genes.
The StabyTM system is based on the poison-antidote ccd module. Poison-antidote modules are found in natural plasmid in which they serve to the plasmid maintenance. The CcdB protein (poison) is cytotoxic and poisons DNA-gyrase complexes. Expression of this gene in the
