Team:Alberta/Tour/biobytes

We continued to develop the biobytes assembly method developed by last year’s team. The method has three main components:

The Anchor

A ferro-magnetic bead attached to a piece of DNA. This piece serves as the initial piece from which we assemble a DNA construct. The bead allows us to manipulate the DNA with magnets making washing and subsequent attachments easier.

The bytes

DNA fragments that can be attached together to build up a larger construct. There are two types of pieces, AB and BA. The A end can join only with another A end and the B end can join only with another B end. As a result pieces can only be joined in a single orientation.

The cap

A DNA fragment that finishes off a construct and allows for circularization of the construct into a plasmid.

Putting the pieces together

The process of building a plasmid is more elegant and more rapid than the current biobyte system!

Easy! And fast too, each step takes about 7 minutes.

Compare that to the standard biobrick method:

Using this process we were able to assemble eight pieces in an afternoon!