"
Team:Tokyo Tech
From 2010.igem.org
1 Graphical abstract
What do you think humanity is?
This is a common question that human have been facing for a long time. Answers might differ from person to person. Looking up the word “humanity” in LONGMAN dictionary, it was described as
“the state of being human rather than an animal or machine. For example, kindness, respect and sympathy towards others.”
In the age of science and technology, people are getting more and more involved in their own business, the society they are connected with, is becoming limited to only a small group of people consisting their family and work partners, their concerns are becoming more personal and less global, and in other words, humanity is losing its position in human life.
Tokyo tech team has put its effort on producing E.coli with humanity, hoping this to be awakening call for all of those who are forgetting their state of being human….
1. Concept -E. coli with humanity-
In order to make E. coli with humanity, we decided to engineer E. coli that can communicate with other, recognize the crisis situation other might be facing and show its sympathy toward it by rescuing it from dying...
Below we pictured our desired behavior of E. coli with humanity. Two kinds of cells are assumed. In normal conditions, they are competitors for survival. (They are called competitors; since they are grown together in a single medium and hence the growing resources are limited.) While in crisis conditions, such that one is dying, another cell would notice the crisis of dying cell and rescue it. The recovered cell appreciates the help by producing “apples”.
2. Apple reporters
Our E. coli with humanity gives “apples” as expression of appreciation. It’s really difficult to make E. coli producing real apples.However,We succeeded in synthesizing two components of apples.
2-1. Color -Carotenoid synthetic pathway complete!-
Astaxanthin is the final metabolite of carotenoid synthetic pathway. (See more…)
2-2. Fragrance -We create Apple flavor in E. coli-
These esters give off apple fragrance. (See more…)
3. Artificial Cooporation System
At section 1, we explained E. coli with humanity we want to create. We have already explained 4th illustration in the figure. Next move on to 1st to 3rd illustration. In order to realize the idea, we constructed a system that named “Artificial Cooperation System" There are two types of E. coli in this system. These two types of cells recognize each other by Quorum Sensing. CellA & CellB carry LasI gene and LuxI gene respectively. To see the rescuing process, click on the play button in the flash to start (See more…)
3-1. Lux repression promoter can work!
Lux repression part has never been measured in iGEM while Lux activation part has measured by many iGEM teams. This year we assayed the activity of lux repression promoter. (See more…)
3-2. Antibiotic Activation Device
We found that the chloramphenicol resistance gene was activated by LuxR/3OC6HSL complex and that the cell introduced the device was able to survive even in high chloramphenicol concentration (750 ug/ml) in the presence of 3OC6HSL. (See more…)
3-4. mathematical modeling of Artificial Cooperation System
4. Full moon inhibits Artificial Cooporation system
In our attempt to produce “wolfcoli”, we introduced light/switching function to the Artificial Cooperation System. Light sensitive promoter “PompC” and synthetic band-detect network were used to perform function designed. (See more…)
4-1. New series of osmoregulative promoters
We introduced two new series of osmoregulative promoters into red-light-dependent gene expression network.(See more…)
4-2. LacIMI showed weaker repression than WT
