http://2010.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design&feed=atom&action=historyTeam:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part Design - Revision history2024-03-29T09:59:04ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.16.5http://2010.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design&diff=99237&oldid=prevTtodd at 13:50, 13 October 20102010-10-13T13:50:06Z<p></p>
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<td colspan='2' style="background-color: white; color:black;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan='2' style="background-color: white; color:black;">Revision as of 13:50, 13 October 2010</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background: #eee; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div>[[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/BioBricks]]</div></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background: #eee; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div>[[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/BioBricks]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">To make a biosensor one needs a mechanism for sensing and a mechanism for reporting. The</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">sensing mechanism needs to be able to translate a change of concentration in an external chemical</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">to a signal on a genetic level. Many such mechanisms exist naturally, as being able to sense and</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">respond to extra cellular chemicals is an essential part of maintaining homoeostasis.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">There are several chemical compounds in fertilizer that could potentially have a corresponding</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">biosensor. Nitrate/nitrite 3 , phosphorous and potassium are the core components of most synthetic</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">fertilizers. Nitrate and potassium play a role in many cellular processes, so it is likely that sensing</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">mechanisms exist for them. The sensor that was designed is nitrate sensitive 4 , this choice was</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">made because there are several potential nitrate sensing pathways in E. coli, as it uses nitrate as</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">an electron acceptor in lieu of oxygen during anaerobic growth.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">The sensor works via the principle of a repressed promoter. A promoter is a segment of DNA at</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">the beginning of a gene that attracts the cellular machinery which transcribes genes into mRNA.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">A promoters strength determines how much transcriptional machinery is recruited, and thus how</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">much mRNA and protein is ultimately produced. A promoter that is ‘repressed’ is being blocked by</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">a repressor, a regulatory protein that reduces its strength. In our case, the repressor is sensitive to</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">nitrates and stops blocking the promoter when it is bound by nitrate molecules (the nitrate is said</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">to be an ‘inducer’). The repressor thus affects gene transcription and may alternately be known as</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">a transcription factor.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">When considering the reporting mechanism, the first consideration was the device that is going</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">to record the sensors output. A initial was that the sensor could report visually by eye and a</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">pigment protein could be used as the reporter, but the efficacy of this would be affected by the</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">background colour of the soil and is not necessarily a very quantitative way to report. We briefly</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">considered using a scented protein that could be detected by a trained animal, but again this is</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">not very quantitative. The reporter that was settled on was the family of fluorescent proteins, as</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">fluorescence can be quantitatively measured accurately and cheaply.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">These proteins were isolated from marine creatures and fluoresce strongly in response to UV</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">light. Accurate measurements of fluorescence can be made with relatively cheap optical equipment,</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">e.g. a modified digital camera or a spectroscope [7]. The sensor is designed to produce two</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">fluorescent proteins that fluoresce at different wavelengths. A green fluorescent protein (GFP)</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">is produced by a gene that is controlled by the nitrate sensitive promoter, so its concentration</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">is proportional to the amount of nitrate sensed by the cell. A red fluorescent protein (RFP) is</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">produced constitutively 5 , so its concentration is independent of nitrate level. By measuring the</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">level of green fluorescence relative to red fluorescence it is possible to determine the concentration</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">of nitrate without having to normalize for cell density. If only GFP were produced it would be necessary to know the number of cells fluorescing in a given measurement to calculate an accurate</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">value.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">It is important to know that nitrate will move from the outside the cell into the cytoplasm</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">where it can interact with the genetic network. It has been shown [8] that during the exponential</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">growth phase E. coli can reach an equilibrium of nitrate to nitrite conversion within 10 minutes.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">The speed of nitrate uptake decreases in the stationary phase as the expression of the nitrate pump</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">NarK decreases, though it has also been shown that the NarK pump is not essential for nitrate</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">transport into E. coli cells [9]. It is a reasonable assumption that the rate of conversion from nitrate</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">(what is put on the field as fertilizer) to nitrite (a product of nitrate reduction found in the cell) is</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="background: #cfc; color:black; font-size: smaller;"><div><ins style="color: red; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">stable enough to act as a reliable proxy for measurement of nitrate.</ins></div></td></tr>
</table>Ttoddhttp://2010.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design&diff=72393&oldid=prevTtodd: New page: {{:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Header}} ==Parts Design / BioBricks== General summery page here, subpages: :Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/Components [[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_De...2010-09-16T16:05:59Z<p>New page: {{:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Header}} ==Parts Design / BioBricks== General summery page here, subpages: <a href="/Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/Components" title="Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part Design/Components">Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/Components</a> [[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_De...</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Header}}<br />
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==Parts Design / BioBricks==<br />
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[[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/Components]]<br />
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[[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/Design_Choices]]<br />
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[[:Team:BCCS-Bristol/Wetlab/Part_Design/BioBricks]]</div>Ttodd