Team:Glasgow

Glasgow's 2014 iGEM project involves the creation of a new and hopefully very useful tool for synthetic biologists. With the aid of a genetic switch we will create a system that, in the presence of a given stimulus, will switch between one gene and another – a change that will persist in subsequent generations unless reversed. The switch is thus an integral part of the project. It is a site specific recombinase switch (φC31 integrase) isolated from the Streptomyces phage φC31. It flips a section of DNA, and a promoter, in order to turn off the expression of one gene section in favour of another.

What are we controlling? Something we saw a lot of potential uses for were Gas Vesicles – gas filled structures used by cyano/halo bacteria to regulate their density and float up to more desirable conditions. These will be the genes being turned ON. The genes we will be switching off are crucial flagella genes, such as motA and fliC. In this way, we will switch the behaviour of the bacteria from a random run and tumble mode to a simple upwards floatation. In this way, the bacteria and anything they produce or pick up will be easily removed from the surface of the medium.