Team:Berkeley/Project/Other organisms

From 2010.igem.org

Revision as of 03:01, 27 October 2010

Our project focused on the delivery of payloads to the cytoplasms of choanoflagellates, but its simple design makes it applicable to a host of other eukaryotes. Our design is only limited in three main aspects as to its potential targets:

• The target organism must be able to naturally phagocytose Escheria Coli.
• The target organism's phagocytic vesicles must contain cholesterols susceptible to our Vesicle-Buster device.
• The target organism must be able to survive in media that is compatible with our Self-Lysis device.

We have started looking at other organisms to deliver payloads to using our payload delivery device. Having screened about a dozen single-celled, freshwater eukaryotes for phagocytosis of E. coli and ability to survive in various concentrations of LB, we are now focusing our efforts on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahymena Tetrahymena], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blepharisma Blepharisma] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramecium Paramecia]. We have already determined that these three types of organisms will readily eat E. coli and are capable of surviving in mixtures of their culturing media and LB.

Tetrahymena	Tetrahymena: Phase contrast	Tetrahymena: Phase contrast and GFP	Tetrahymena: GFP only
Blepharisma	Blepharisma: Phase contrast	Blepharisma: Phase contrast and GFP	Blepharisma: GFP only
Paramecia	Paramecia: Phase contrast	Paramecia: Phase contrast and GFP	Paramecia: GFP only