From 2009.igem.org

What is iGEM?

The international Genetically Engineered Machine competition is designed to encourage undergraduates to work motivated on a project of their own in the field of synthetic biology.The iGEM competition started in 2003 at the MIT and grew steadily in size with the years. Every university can register a team. Even collaborations of schools are allowed to participate. Goal of the project is to build new biological systems and to operate them in a living cell. Starting point for every team is a kit of biological parts.These biological systems are presented at the Jamboree at the MIT where we give a 20 min presentation and present a poster.

Freedom with what kind of project to do is essential. The students should hold most of the responsibility in that whereas the super-visor advise and guide. Therefore the iGEM competition is divided into different tracks going from environment, food energy, experimental measurement, health and medicine, human practice advance to software tool. This diversity implies that teams should be multidisciplinary.

Why are we participating in iGEM?

We like the idea of creating something useful and gaining knowledge at the same time. The iGEM project combines this idea with an inter-national touch and empowers undergraduates to really live and work what they are studying. IGEM is the perfect way for students to get hands on experience in state-of-the-art re-search. This is done in a playful and competitive manner. It is also a good learning experience for us as we work in a professional lab environment, which we do not gain from usual course based educations.

IGEM is a platform for us to meet top ranked university researchers (other supervisors and undergraduates) from around the globe and involving ourselves with them will allow us to share knowledge and gain new experience.

On top of it all, it is the first time a Swedish team is participating and it will be the best opportunity for us to take part in this glorious voyage and the previous years show that being a rookie helps to win (2007 China and 2008 Slovenia).

Our project

The effect of yeast mutants on the cell cycle by marking the stages of the cell cycle with fluorescent proteins

Our goal is to create S. cerevisiae cells which have each cell cycle phase tagged with different fluorescent proteins.Specific aims are considered in conducting this project:

1. Creating an affective signaling strategy, i.e. either linking the fluorescent protein to the cyclin or linking the protein to the same promoter as the cyclin
2. Tagging three or four of the cell cycle phases to observe the dynamic behavior
3. Modeling the behavior of mutants and evaluating the model

The different phases of the cell cycle (G1, S, G2, M) are controlled by specific CDK – complexes. These complexes are activated via a protein called cyclin. Activated cyclin – CDK – complexes promote the accelerated production of more cyclins. At a certain point this positive feedback loop turns into a negative feedback loop, i.e. the cyclin production comes to a stop and the complexes are turned off a cyclin degradation via ubiquitin.

In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cere-visiae there are 9 different cyclins responsi-ble for the different phases. The cell cycle and the corresponding cyclins have been studied thoroughly.

The positive correlation between cyclin expression and cell cycle phase can be used to dynamically visualize the cell cycle. There-fore we want to tag one cyclin for three phases while the fourth is the default.

Tagging the cyclins will be done with GFP proteins. These proteins form a visible wavelength cromophore on their own with-out the help of any chaperones. GFP has been first discovered in the jellyfish Aequo-rea victoria. The wildtype GFP is very stable and is not degraded by most proteases therefore a lot of variants with varying char-acteristics have been engineered. These proteins have in common that they can be linked to another protein usually without affecting its function.

Having the cells successfully tagged the cell cycle can be evaluated in different conditions (e. g. NaCl) and different yeast mutants can be analyzed with respect to the influence of the knocked-out gene on the cell cycle.

The purpose of the project

1. This project might help to improve the yeast cell model and since S. cerevisiae is a model organism for eukaryotes the results might be used for medical purposes.
2. This also implies a more accurate deterministic approach for Systems Biology/Synthetic Biology.
3. Being able to analyze the whole cell cycle dynamically can help in determining the effect of drugs, e.g. in cancer research where drugs often inhibit or influence the cell cycle.

Funding of the iGEM team Sweden

iGEM is a great place for multinational companies to advertise as well as being seen by science community all over the world. iGEM is becoming one of the big-gest scientific competition and it is a great place for your company to show off. This year is the first year which Sweden has its own team in the competition. The Sweden team is supported by both Chalmers Technical University and Göteborg University and our supervisor is from the Wallenberg laboratory at the Sahlgrenska academy.

Team: Sweden

• Sven Nelander –Supervisor

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dept of Molecular and Clinical Medicine

Email: sven.nelander@wlab.gu.se

• Anna Hallerbach

Student: Bioinformatics, Chalmers

• Fahim Mahmudur Rahman

Student: Bioinformatics , Chalmers

• Guo Jing

Student: Bioinformatics , Chalmers

• Laleh Kazemzadeh

Student: Bioinformatics, Chalmers

• Mohammad Tanvir Ahamad

Student: Bioinformatics, Chalmers

• Mohammad Intakhar Ahmad

Student: System Biology, Goteborg

• Naser Monsefi

Student: System Biology, Goteborg

• Tabassum Farzana Jahan

Student: Bioinformatics, Chalmers

• Mao Tiezheng

Student: Bioinformatics, Chalmers

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