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Team:UCL London/Project/Description
From 2009.igem.org
“Happy Living”
Our project is aiming to produce a series of biosensors which can improve the traditional mechanical measurements in bio-processing by using the different fluorescent proteins as indicators of different stresses for bacteria during the bio-processing, particularly on oxygen level/acetate production, shear stress, and cell growth phase.
Experiments are based on manipulating E.coli cells. Standard parts from the registry will be joined with different promoters from natural/modified E.coli genome which respond to reducing oxygen level, mis-folding proteins, and cell growth. The modified standard plasmids are then transformed into E.coli K12 cells and going to be investigated in both wet lab and fermentation process. Once the individual operons are functional well, all the related operons can be assembled as a cassette for a specific stress for bacteria.
Apart from the wet lab, modelling is also a very important part in the project …
Although biosensors are now widely used in synthetic biology area, what make our project unique is that we focus on the ‘feeling’ of bacteria themselves, rather than just using them as a tool to detect surrounding environment.
