Contribution: the biobricks
The contribution that our team leads to the rest of the scientific community is very useful if other teams want to design different biosensors. We had made constructions that contain a CO2 inducible promoter (in order to detect high CO2 concentrations), easily detect reporters, and PEST sequences which are signals for protein degradation (See “Proof of concept”).
Each part of the construction is related with a function that an electrical senor develops:
The inducible promoters are related with the detection of the substance. If other team wants to change the substance that is being sense, they should change the inducible promoter. (See “Engineering success”)
The reporter is related with the signal that the electrical sensor emits when it detects the substance that is sensing (changing the colour of a light, making some specific noise...). Our reporter makes the plant shines when is exposed at UV light or change its colour from green to red.
The PEST sequence is related to the switch off that the sensor does one time the detection has finished, for example a fume detector stops ringing one time the fume has disappeared.
This explanation is a brief and simple metaphor of how our project works, but it could help us to understand how the construction makes the plant work as a biosensor. (See “Project description, Plant synthetic biology and Proof of concept” to know the biological base of the project)
As a result, we made a construction that gives to plants the capacity of detecting high concentrations of CO2 by changing their colour. In addition, we had designed a strategy to detect any other kind of substance by only changing the inducible promoter. This would be the work of each team, the selection of the promoter, the building of the construction and the experimentation phase. We calculate that a new team would be capable to create a new completely functional biosensor plasmid in few weeks.
The degradation sequences: PEST
The PEST sequences are a new area of investigation in which a lot of laboratories are working in to understand better how they work in the processes of protein degradation. Our future results with PEST sequences, would help other laboratories and teams from iGEM to develop their own ideas about how to applicate these degradation sequences.
Our parts
| Bba_K5011004 | pDGB1 alpha1 pATPS-eYGFPuv-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011009 | pDGB1 alpha1 pATPS-RUBY-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011010 | pDGB1 alpha1 pCYS4-eYGFPuv-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011011 | pDGB1 alpha1 pCYS4-RUBY-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011012 | pDGB1 alpha1 pG3PDH-eYGFPuv-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011013 | pDGB1 alpha1 pG3PDH-RUBY-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011014 | pDGB1 apha1 p35S-eYGFPuv_PEST-Tnos |
| Bba_K5011001 | pUPD2 pATPS |
| Bba_K5011005 | pUPD2 pCYS4 |
| Bba_K5011006 | pUPD2 G3PDH |
| Bba_K5011007 | pUPD2 RUBY |
| Bba_K5011002 | pUPD2 eYGFPuv |
| Bba_K5011008 | pUPD2 p35S |
| Bba_K5011003 | pUPD2 Tnos |
| Bba_K5011015 | pUPD2 PEST |
