Regulatory

All but one of the regulatory elements we isolated are promoters, and are described in brief detail below, with more elaborate information on their parts registry pages. The remaining BioBrick is the 3' UTR from unc-54, which is roughly equivalent to a bacterial terminator and performs a number of important regulatory functions in complement to the promoter. All complete C. elegans constructs must include some form of functional 3' UTR. Promoters were selected based on their utility, strength of expression, and ease of avoiding potentially harmful cutsites.

Constitutive

• pGpd-2: gpd-2 is part of the glycolysis pathway. The gpd-2 promoter thus expresses at a very high level—AceView says 43.5 times the average for a C. elegans constitutive gene.
• pSip-1: sip-1 encodes a member of the heat shock family of proteins. Accoring to AceView, sip-1 is expressed at a level 17.6 times the average, at all levels of development.
• pRab-7: rab-7 expresses a GTPase involved in endosome trafficking, and expresses at 4.3 times the average.

Inducible

• pHsp-3: HSP-3 is a protein involved in the heat shock response pathway, and is expressed constitutively. AceView says this is 22.9 times the average. However, WormBase asserts that transcriptional levels can be enhanced by the presence of diothiothreitol or tunicamycin.

Tissue-Specific

• pMec-7: This targets the mechanoreceptor neurons. We were able to use it in a construct successfully with eCFP and our 3' UTR brick: see its page on the parts registry.
• pOdr-1:
• pStr-1:
• pOsm-10:
• pFlp-1:
• pSra-10:
• pStr-220:

Reporters

• eGFP:
• eCFP:
• eYFP:
• mCherry:

Optogenetics Proteins

• ChR2:
• NpHR:
• Fusions: ChR2::eYFP and NpHR::eCFP

Constructs

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Getting the Parts

You can get our special worm parts through the standard iGEM distribution channel: the Parts Registry. Click on a part number below to be taken to the relevant description page.