Revision as of 15:57, 27 October 2010

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BacillaFilla: Fixing cracks in Concrete

Project Description

BacillaFilla, an engineered Bacillus subtilis, aims to repair cracks in concrete, which can cause catastrophic structural failure. BacillaFilla would be applied to structures by spraying onto their surface.

BacillaFilla swims deep into the cracks. Repair is effected by production of CaCO₃, filamentous Bacillus subtilis cells and levan. CaCO₃ expands at the same rate as concrete, making it the ideal filler. Filamentous Bacillus subtilis cells have similar tensile strength to the synthetic fibres used in fibre-reinforced concrete, and provide reinforcement. Levan glues CaCO₃ and filamentous cells in place.

B. subtilis 168 sporulates, making it ideal for storage and transportation. The cells can be made to be tolerant to concrete's high pH.

We designed a swarming BioBrick part for repairing B. subtilis 168's defective swrA and sfp genes and regaining motility. At the end of the crack the quorum sensing peptide subtilin triggers a co-ordinated population response from a subtilin-inducible promoter. Upregulating SR1 and rocF promotes arginine and urea production, increasing exogenous CaCO₃ deposition. Over-producing YneA induces the filamentous cell phenotype, while SacB converts extracellular sucrose to levan glue.

To protect the environment our project also includes a design for a kill switch.

The work on this project (including part design, computational modelling, lab work and graphic design) was completed by a multidisciplinary team of students. Details of this work can be found on the Solution, Modelling and Lab book pages.

Overview of BacillaFilla

Summary of achievements:
BRONZE:	From the beginning of the project, we have successfully registered the team of two instructors, six advisors and eight members. We have completed and submitted a Project Summary form, developed ideas and shared them on our iGEM wikipedia page. We also entered information on one new BioBrick part, [http://partsregistry.org/Part:BBa_K302012 IPTG-induced filamentous cell formation], into the Registry of Parts. The BioBrick for the IPTG-induced filamentous cell formation has been submitted to the Parts Registry.
SILVER:	Our new BioBrick, the IPTG-inducible filamentous cell formation part works, so we characterised it and included the information, [http://partsregistry.org/Part:BBa_K302012:Experience BBa_K302012], on the Parts Registry.
GOLD:	In order to obtain a gold, we investigated the benefits of an e-Science approach, focusing on workflows, to synthetic biology. Details can be found at here. This part of the project resulted in us proposing a new standard for a RESTful API which facilitates the discovery and publication of models of functional biological units. The standard has been submitted to the BioBricks Foundation as BBF RFC 66. We have also improved on existing BioBrick parts to produce hyperspankoid: [http://partsregistry.org/Part:BBa_K302003 BBa_K302003].

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