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Team:Minnesota/Project
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Overall project
Metabolic Engineering: In vivo Nanobioreactors
Modern microbial engineering methods allow the introduction of useful exogenous metabolic pathways into cells. Metabolism of certain organic compounds is sometimes limited by the production of toxic intermediates. Several bacteria have evolved protein based microcompartments capable of sequestering such reactions, thus protecting cytosolic machinery and processes from interference by these intermediates. For our project, we will identify and transform the genes encoding proteins responsible for the production and assembly of bacterial microcompartments. Additionally, we will confirm the signal sequences that target enzymes to the protein compartments by fusing this sequence to reporter genes. To demonstrate the microcompartment’s potential to serve as nanobioreactors, we will target genes encoding a short catabolic pathway into recombinant microcompartments assembled in E. coli.
Athina Software Package
Automated Theoretical Interaction Network Assembly is a web service to transform a sequence of BioBricks, or any other set of biomolecular components, to a set of reactions that can be simulated dynamically. The user simply inputs the Biobricks and their relationships and Designer builds a reaction network using biological interactions rules. This software package also includes a wiki. This is a web service to collect the kinetic parameters necessary to create a model that can be simulated.
Project Details
For application in synthetic biology, bacterial microcompartments could be useful tools for engineering metabolic pathways for two important reasons. First, they can be used to sequester a toxic intermediate away from the cytoplasm. Second, by co-localizing enzymes inside a microcompartment the rate of diffusion of intermediate between enzymatic steps is decreased, thereby improving efficiency.
