“A BETTER FUTURE WITH SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY”

Study of synthetic biology emerged as a multidisciplinary science that help people in solving various problems. Among the general public, synthetic biology is famous as bioengineering and extreme genetic engineering which have an advantage in redesigning a life through genetical circuit, thus allows people to manipulate a new organism for use in treatment and diagnosis of disease, provision of quality seeds, remediation of environmental pollution caused by industrial and mining as well as the mitigation of global warming.

Indonesia as one of the currently high development countries in science is allowing for synthetic biology to grow rapidly. Prospects for the synthetic biology's development in Indonesia, among others, is the independence of technology in the health sector include the development of a specific diagnosis, the provision of pharmaceutical raw materials, and technology screening for Indonesia natural resources which have potency to treat various types of diseases.

Brawijaya University iGEM team will develop synthetic biology in order to solve health sector problems, focus in Cervical Cancer. We have three sub-projects, they are: plant engineering for cervical cancer prevention, developing Cervical Cancer Care Program application for smartphone as helpdesk, and scanning technology for natural materials treatment (SCT Kit).

       Tea plant (Camelia sinensis) has catechin compounds that contains antioxidants. Catechin family that most effective used as antioxidant is Epigallocathecin gallate (EGCG). Based on research in vitro or in silico, EGCG is able to inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells because stop over-expression between L1 HPV 16- EGFR (Epithel Growth Factor Receptor) bond but there are few of EGCG content in tea plant. Based on these problems, we would to over- expression EGCG by knockdown non-compound EGCG gene, so hopefully the content of EGCG on tea are more prominent. We design siRNA sequence from LAR gene (to inhibit non-EGCG compound) using bioinformatics tool and use P97 promoter to initiate expression in mammalian cell (using HeLa cell). That part will be insert into the psB1C3 linear backbone. To checking performance of this part, we insert sequence target of siRNA into the plasmid Bba_E0240 and get the promoter CMV from Bba_K747096 part. We also prepare for positive control and negative control for this experiment. Positive control part containing siRNA for GFP, insert into Bba_K747096 part that contain CMV promoter, and negative control containing CMV promoter and insert to the Bba_E0240 part containing GFP. Each part will be growth in HeLa cell culture and observed the succeding by fluorescent microscope.