Team:Cambridge/Human Practices

One of the plates of V. phosphoreum we prepared.

Human practises encompasses the social ethical and legal considerations of our work. We imagined how our particular project might impact on peoples lives as well as thinking about the wider issues of the way we practise our science and share our findings.

Under construction

Bacterial lux operons emit light using five enzymes:

• luxA and luxB form the luciferase part of the system, they emit light using the substrate tetradecanal
• luxC, luxD and luxE are involved in the biosynthesis of tetradecanal from readily available substrates

Bioluminescent species

The Cambridge team is looking into these bacterial luciferases:

• Vibrio fischeri forms symbioses with squid to prevent the squid from casting a shadow on moonlit nights. Due to this their lux proteins are non-functional above 30 degrees
• Vibrio (formerly Photobacterium) phosphoreum emits a very blue light, perhaps partly through its use of [http://partsregistry.org/Part:BBa_K216007 lumazine]