Team:Imperial College London/Chassis

Our choice of chassis was B. subtilis.

Here we list the reasons why B. subtilis serves as a more appropriate chassis option with regards to our project design and main project specifications. To re-iterate the pertinent project specifications:

• Safe
• Portable
• Cheap
• Fast
• Easy to use

We selected B. subtilis because it is a well characterized gram positive bacterium that is non pathogenic. It was convenient but also a coincidence that within our chosen chassis were features with which we could manipulate to use in our detection module.

Below is a brief table summary of how Bacillus meets our system requirements and also some of the issues we encountered throughout the implementation process and how we overcame them.

E.coli was considered as a possible option. Despite the gram negative outer membrane, there are strains that have been made more permeable through knockout of Lipid A biosynthesis in lipopolysaccharides [4] There are also proteins that can disrupt membranes when they are inserted in them, thus making them more permeable. These chages in permeability are likely due to transient ruptures of outer membrane and so unlikely to make a very responsive or robust detecton organism [4].

Surplus information on B. Subtilis chassis [http://www.subtiwiki.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Subti-Wiki]

[http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/146/12/3025 1]
[http://www.microbialcellfactories.com/content/5/1/22 2]
[http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118603263/PDFSTART 3]
[http://aac.asm.org/cgi/content/full/43/6/1459?view=long&pmid=10348770 4]