Team:Caltech/Project
From 2014.igem.org
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Overall Project Summary
Project Details Materials and Methods The Experiments Results Data Analysis Conclusions References |
Background and MotivationOne of synthetic biology's chief promises is the potential to construct artificial, self-regulatory genetic circuits. While intracellular genetic regulation is very well-documented, signalling between cells, mediating intercellular regulation, remains less well-known and explored. This year, the Caltech 2014 iGEM team focused on the implementation of non-endogenous bacterial quorum-sensing systems in E. coli, in hopes that successful transfer of these systems into E. coli will promote enhanced prototyping of intercellular—in addition to intracellular—signaling and regulation in synthetic biology’s favorite model organism.The original motivation for this project was to create a model system that will resemble the hormone regulatory systems of the body. Examples of disorders of regulation can be seen in diabetes, hyperthyroidism, Cushing’s disease, etc. The original intent of the project was to create an analogous model of one of these regulatory systems in E. coli, showing one plausible framework to serve as a scaffold for further research. The Caltech iGEM team plans to use the principles and methods of synthetic biology to create a model system The model system will follow the design in the picture below. The gene circuit has been designed to produce a signaling peptide in response to some factor, and then have another cell respond to the produced signaling peptide to form a regulatory network. The pathway used to activate the regulation will ideally not interfere with any of the intercellular genetic circuitry already present in E. coli. The synthetic pathway will be assembled from systems that are present in other bacteria and will hopefully be dissimilar enough to not interact with any already present E. coli circuitry. We will be building off of a previous iGEM team’s project of bacterial quorum sensing and regulation in E. coli. ![]() |