Team:ETH Zurich/expresults/qs

From 2014.igem.org

Quorum Sensing

As described above and elsewhere (ref to biotools) we exploited the quorum-sensing systems LuxI/LuxR, LasI/LasR, and RhlI/RhlR (ref to qs parts) in order to achieve orthogonal cell-to-cell communication. Even though these systems are often used, in particular in iGEM projects (ref ref), potential cross-talk activity between the different systems may occur. In order to address that challenge, we have investigated the possible cross-talk on several molecular levels: a) unspecific binding of inducer molecules to one specific regulator (table 1), b) unspecific binding of regulator molecules to one specific promoter sequence (table 2), and c) combinations of both.

PUT TABLE HERE

In the laboratory, we measured a) a given promoter with its corresponding regulator and a different inducer molecule, b) a given promoter with an unspecific regulator and a particular inducer, and c) a given promoter with both regulator and inducer being unspecific. This gives in total 27 possible combinations. The output was again assessed via sfGFP and measured in terms of fluorescence on microtiter-plate scale.