Team:Penn/Specsheet

The majority of synthetic biology happens in extremely well-characterized chassis like E. coli and mammalian cells. However, thousands of strains of bacteria found in nature harbor amazing properties for new and useful foundational advances in synthetic biology. Unfortunately, these more unconventional strains, including Magnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1, have little or no characterization, making them difficult to engineer and even grow.

While the iGEM registry contains some information, our personal experiences with using an unconventional chassis demonstrate the need for more detailed characterization in growth conditions and protocols. In order to broaden the range of organisms open to synthetic biology, we designed a biological chassis specifications sheet with essential information for successfully growing and engineering unconventional organisms. Using our spec sheet, we hope to compile and centralize detailed information for new chassis development and use. Most importantly, we hope that we can move the field of synthetic biology forward.

We have compiled characterization and protocols from various 2014 iGEM teams that also used unconventional strains of bacteria in order to further research developments in those strains as well.