Team:Berkeley/Project Overview

From 2010.igem.org

This is our project overview.
Abstract
The ability to manipulate the DNA of an organism is vital to many modern fields of biology. Although we have perfected this in common research species such as E. coli, yeast and mammalian cells, it is still impossible to transform many other species. Lower metazoans in particular have several advantages over pre-existing chassis but remain out of reach because of an inability to deliver protein and DNA. Our project is an attempt to develop transgenics ) techniques for a family of single celled organisms called choanoflagellates. These species are interesting to researchers because they are the closest living relative to our microbial ancestor that became the first multicellular animal. Nicole King, here at UC Berkeley, and other researchers across the globe who study these single-celled eukaryotes are hindered by the inability to genetically manipulate them. The Berkeley iGEM 2010 team is applying synthetic biology to this problem. We are engineering bacteria that can deliver DNA into the choanoflagellate. Choanoflagellates are predatory and naturally eat bacteria. Once our bacteria is engulfed by the choanoflagellate, it is programmed to burst using a self-lysis device derived from the 2008 UC Berkeley iGEM team. At this point, proteins being expressed by the bacteria will be released and ready to act. A vesicle buster device will open the small food vesicle and release our payload into the cytoplasm. The payload can consist of either protein, nucleic acids, or a combination of the both. We demonstrated the functionality of the the self-lysis and vesicle buster device by delivery GFP to the cytoplasm of the choanoflagellate. Future work involves targeting protein and DNA to the nucleus in order to genetically modify the choanoflagellate. A transposon/transposase device will move to the nucleus and splice DNA in or out of the genome.