Team:GreatBay SZ

GBSZ:Home

header

SPIDERMAN

SPIDroin EngineeRing with chroMoprotein And Natural dye

Abstract

Spider silk serves as a new material with superior properties that can be applied in medication, cloth, and aerospace fields. However, spider breeding is not applicable due to spider's fierce behavior. The current approach is to produce recombinant spidroins (silk proteins) from other chassis and spin them into silk. This year , we aim to manufacture recombinant spider silk with E.coli and color the silk for application in cloth industry. We modularized three significant domains of spidroin - the N-terminal, the repetitive region, and the C-terminal - and integrated them into various spidroin to form silk. We then dyed the silk with microbial natural pigments deoxyviolacein and indigo. To obtain better color and a more convenient dying process, we fused the repetitive region to chromoproteins and mixed them with spidroin during spinning. Our team hopes to provide a novel approach for cloth production and explore new possibilities for spider silk applications.

PROJECT

How to weave a Spiderman suit out of nothing but a handful of DNA sequences and E. Coli? In this project, GreatBay_SZ creates biobricks that demonstrate functional fabulous spider silk protein (spidroin) expression. Click here to know more about our project!

DEMONSTRATION

Our project is well-demonstrated to ensure our understanding and present it to the public. With solid and thorough data of our experiments, we perform demonstrations to directly show our progress.

PARTS

For our project, parts of natural dye production and a collection of spider silk proteins are successfully characterized. This includes improvements based on previous parts, invention of new parts and collection of parts.

HP

Besides lab-based work, we host substantial human practices event along with our experiments. We endeavor to raise public concerns about synthetic biology, and beyond which we organize small-scale and research-based workshops with professional groups.

TEAM

GreatBay_SZ consists of 21 high school students and 1 instructor from China. Our schools cover countries including China, America and Costa Rica. This diversity promotes universal work that the team does internationally. Learn more about these enthusiastic bio-lovers in our team page!

JUDGING

This is a special page to help judges on evaluating the project. Let us show you why we deserve medals and awards.

NOTEBOOK

This notebook contains detailed description of our experiments. If you want to learn more about our organized experiments, click here.

SAFETY

Safety is an essential concern in our project. We have been trained to work safely and responsibly both as individuals and as a team in the lab.

>
<