09/01/2014

Hello, dear reader!!! Welcome to September!! Today we had to think a lot and a lot to do!

Today we had the final result from the test using medium LM (LB + Mercury chloride) 20ug/ml made on 29/08/2014. The result after 3 days of incubation at 37°C in medium LM 20ug/ml:

DH5α with our construction BB_Essential + BB_Bioremediation in PSB1C3

Our hypothesis is that the constructions BB_Essential + E0840 and BB_Essential + K346004 made for bio detection and accumulation, respectively, don’t present the main protein to resist mercury: MerA (Mercury redutase present on biobrick BB_Bioremediation). This means that the bacteria easily dies in mercury’s presence. We developed a strategy to solve this problem!

Our strategy is to analyze the growth profile of DH5α in several mercury concentrations, aiming to know the concentration that won’t harm DH5α, but will still activate our promoter regulated by Hg. Today we prepared the concentrations and the strategies!

At the same time, the tests and improvements on mediums were made. Today we transformed in JM110 the biobricks BBa_K516030 (mRFP protein generator TERM+ RBS+ B0030) and BBa_I712074 (strong promoter from T7 bacteriophage). We will also produce a bio sensor with mRFP to be able to see it at naked eye, and in the other construction, a super expression of K346004, the metal binding peptide, to transform this bacteria into a super accumulator! :D

HANDS ON!!!!!!