Contribution
Wet lab
Our project is concentrating on the environmental-friendly isobutanol (precursor of SAF) production by non-model microorganism Zymomonas mobilis. We applied two strategies with new and improved parts and modules to construct and optimize the isobutanol production. We hope our project may prove useful to the iGEM teams in the future for a similar purpose.
Part Contribution
We designed 15 Basic Parts and 23 Composite Parts, as well as improved an existing Part from previous iGEM team. Combining these parts, we optimized the isobutanol production modules, and increased the isobutanol production approaching to 6 g/L. Significantly, we successfully expressed homologous carboxysome from cyanobacteria into bacteria (Z. mobilis). The artificial carboxysome structure can be used to engineer nanoreactors to recruit specific enzymes with a huge application potential in synthetic biology. All these parts and modules are expected to be compatible in other microorganisms and allow new iGEM competitors to achieve their projects’ objectives and enrich the competition’s database.
Engineering strategy Contribution
To optimize the isobutanol production module, we applied two tetracycline-inducible promoter Ptet to drive the target genes in one recombinant strain, Ptet-dcpf1 (in gemone) and Ptet-BsAls2-Peno-ilvC-ilvD (in plasmid). It resulted in much more tetracycline (0.5 vs 2 g/mL) was added to induce the gene expression to achieve a high isobutanol production. However, the high tetracycline in the medium inevitably significantly inhibit the cell growth, bringing about a controversial phenomenon. This information suggested us and other iGEM teams in the future that it is important to select the promoters, especially not applied two same inducible promoters in one strain.
Dry lab
Synthetic Biology Association
This year we founded the Hubei University Synthetic Biology Association and organized The Hubei Synthetic Biology Open Day, where we invite anyone interested in synthetic biology to join us, and we hope to collaborate with IGEM teams or synthetic biology institutions in central China.
We are mainly responsible for the following affairs:
1.Assisting the organizer in preparing and organizing the IGEM Central China Exchange Conference, arranging all matters of the conference and recruiting related staff.
2. Contacting enterprises, organizations, teams and scholars related to the conference, seeking cooperation or sponsorship, and providing technical support.
3. Carry out scientific popularization and public education on synthetic biology, and promote synthetic biology knowledge and applications for the general public.
We hope that other IGEM teams, including future IGEM teams, can contact us to start cooperation and grow together.
Educational Union
You can see our efforts for education equity in our Collaboration page and education page. We made an education map to show the previous collaborations of different teams, and also the education map shows the places we went to help the children there, and we plan to set up long term contact points in the poor areas here, and return to these places every year to face the challenges with the children until we overcome the obstacles.
If you are interested in our activities or if you also want to contribute to educational equity, we hope that the Education Coalition and the Education Map will facilitate your work. In the future, we would like to establish this coalition as a public interest organization. Provide funding and any support we can to IGEM teams who want to do education and other public interest organizations.
Business Plan
We have put our business plan on our business plan page, if you are interested in turning your project into a business, you can refer to our business plan and discuss the details with us, you can download it directly.
We hope our business plan can inspire you. We are happy to learn from each other, which also includes project background, product technology, market analysis, company strategy, business model, marketing strategy, financial analysis and risk analysis, as well as a description of the process and protection of patent applications in China.