Team:ETH Zurich/labblog/20140611meet

Week 3: Plasmid design started, Modeling started

Wednesday, June 11th

• We started plasmid design :

First draft of plasmids. The sensor plasmid is the same in every cell. Different logic + repressors plasmids are present in cells p and q. The logic + repressors plasmid from cells p is producing the quorum sensing molecule p, and another version is present in cells q which produces QSq. Colonies of p and q cells will be arranged in an alternate way on the millifluidic chip. Here as an example we use the lux system for p cells and the rhl system for q cells.

ΦC31 and Bxb1 are integrases. LuxR an RhlR are quorum sensing repressors. A riboswitch construct is placed around quorum sensing constructs to prevent leakiness of lux and rhl promoters. Type p colonies produce AHL by expressing the enzyme LuxI. Type q colonies produce Rhl by expressing the enzyme RhlI. In fact, we don't know yet which quorum sensing systems we will use. We will have to perform cross-talk experimetns in order to choose the ones that are the most orthogonal.

• We tried to print our first agar millifluidic chip : we printed it too small, and the printer had resolution problems.
• We wrote all reactions and found parameters from the literature for our model.