Why ayeSwitch?

For this year’s iGEM competition the Aberdeen team has worked on developing a translationally controlled toggle switch embedded in yeast. Genetic toggle switches are a vital component for synthetic circuits¹, enabling functional control of biological functions. The majority of toggle switches used for iGEM are embedded in Escherichia coli and can only be controlled at the transcriptional level ^2,3. Our main goal was to create and model a novel gene circuit, wherein yeast cells can be switched between mutually exclusive fluorescent proteins under exposure to environmental factors. This switching behaviour would be regulated at the translational level, an innovation over previous systems that only demonstrated transcriptional regulation ^4,5.

References

¹ Ernesto Andrianantoandro et al. Synthetic biology: new engineering rules for an emerging discipline Molecular Systems Biology 2:2006.002

² Timothy S. Gardner et al. Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli Nature 403, 339-342 (20 January 2000)

³ Mariette R. Atkinson et al. Development of Genetic Circuitry Exhibiting Toggle Switch or Oscillatory Behavior in Escherichia coli Cell, Volume 113, Issue 5, 597-607, 30 May 2003

⁴ Adam Platt and Richard J Reece The yeast galactose genetic switch is mediated by the formation of a Gal4p–Gal80p–Gal3p complex The EMBO Journal (1998) 17, 4086 - 4091

⁵ D W Griggs and M Johnston Regulated expression of the GAL4 activator gene in yeast provides a sensitive genetic switch for glucose repression PNAS October 1, 1991 vol. 88 no. 19 8597-8601