Team:TUDelft/DesignTest

Home

Project

Description Design Results Demonstrate

Wetlab

Experiment Protocols Safety Notebook

Modeling

Model

Reaction Kinetics

Copy Number independence Transcription Variation Translation Variation

Codon Harmonization

Parts

Parts Overview

Human Practices

Human Practices Education & Engagement

Team

Team Members Collaborations

Acknowledgements

Attributions Sponsors

Judging Form Medal Requirements

 

• The Sci-Phi 29 Universal Toolkit
• Orthogonal Replication
• Controllable Expression
• Modular Cloning

The Sci-Phi 29 Universal Toolkit

Synthetic biology has come very far, but the field will only reach its full potential when we are able to explore the vast bacterial metabolic and physiological diversity in our planet to solve the many issues we are facing today. Inspired by iGEM’s great contribution in the creation and standardization of parts, our vision is to engineer a universal toolkit which can operate efficiently and predictably in any bacterial chassis. We envision that this will encourage iGEM teams and other synthetic biologists to use a wider range of organisms in their project, saving time and resources as well as unifying the efforts of Synthetic Biology into host independent genetic engineering. In order to create a transferable genetic toolkit whose parts present predictable and standardized behavior across a wide range of bacteria, we have addressed the two main processes of the central molecular biology dogma: replication of genetic vectors and gene expression. We believe that applying the concepts of orthogonality (EXPLAIN why orthogonality is great) and systems control to these processes will enable us to insulate the genetic circuitry from species-specific nuances. We thus ...

Host Independent Replication and the Phi 29 system

One of the main constraints in genetically engineering novel and unconventional organisms is the need to identify vectors that work in these organisms. Broad host range plasmids can be replicated in a wider range of bacteria, but are often limited to a specific group of organisms and, due to their size, present a great resource burden to the host. Furthermore, it is quite unpredictable how or whether these plasmids will function for every new species they are transformed into. Genome integration is a commonly used alternative, but it is strain-specific and not as robust. Based on the concept of orthogonal replication, we have turned to the Phi 29 bacteriophage replication system to develop a plasmid that can replicate independently of the host’s machinery.