Team:Bordeaux/Team

From 2014.igem.org

Revision as of 14:03, 14 August 2014 by Zozo (Talk | contribs)

Elastin, Resilin and Spider Silk (Spidroin) are elastomeric protein found respectively in animals, insects and spiders. These biomaterials provide properties including high stress resistance, high elasticity, which permit insect flight or awesome jumping capacities. To produce these proteins, synthetics genes were engineered and it inspired by consensus sequences found in natural peptides, for elastin like polypeptides (ELP) the consensus sequence is VPGXG where X can be different amino acids, on the same way GPGXG, GPGGY and GPGGV were identified for spider silk like polypeptides (SLP) and finally for resilin like polypeptides (RLP) there is PSXXYGAP. To produce these synthetics proteins, genes were introduce into a living tool, Escherichia Coli. Then the bacteria produce the protein, after which proteins are purify and freeze-dried to estimate the amount of product. Further soluble proteins are wet spin to obtain strings and test physicals properties. The final goal is to do protein assembly with ELP, RLP and SLP to create new polymers with new properties. To do so the biobrick assembly method is used and optimized to combine fragments (ELP + SLP +RLP) without stop codon to obtain new innovative proteins.