Team:Valencia/WetLab/CellTeam

Cell Team

An important part of our project is to work with yeasts in order to create each and everyone of the cell-pixels of our bioscreen. We will use some aequorin-transformed yeast strains.

Aequorin is a luminiscent protein isolated from luminescent jellyfish and many other marine organisms that uses coelenterazine as its cofactor to produce light whenever Ca²⁺ is bound to it. Using a chemical input (KOH, alkali shock) we will open Ca²⁺ channels in the yeasts' membrane (Viladevall L, et al. J Biol Chem. (2004) 279 43614–43624), Ca²⁺ will enter into the cells and we will get light as an output.

Later we will try to reproduce the same response with an electrical stimulus, using some hardware built by ourselves.