This part of the project is concerned with developing a system which is naturally competent. This is to be done by introducing com genes taken from naturally competent strains into a suitable vector imparting natural competence and readiness of the bacterium to acquire genes. Induction of competence will thus enable the bacteria to take up naked DNA from its surroundings which will greatly facilitate transformation experiments. Uptake of DNA is a highly complex process requiring large host of proteins involved in DNA translocation, pore forming proteins etc.
This has several applications in bacterial systems such as acquisition of foreign genetic material not only to study the natural evolutionary processes and genomic diversity, but also exploitation of this particular gene behavior into automated genetic framework leading to uptake of desired genes in vitro. We are trying to contribute these particular competence factor encoding genes to the standard biobrick registry and molding them into the biobrick format.However, realizing the natural sequences of the genes and presence of some undesired restriction sites we will try to make them Bioscaffold parts. This attempt will be the first of its kind where natural competence factors could be made available to the biobrick registry which will be of versatile use.
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