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Team:Berkeley/Project/Vesicle Buster
From 2010.igem.org
- Home
- Project
- Parts
- Self-Lysis
- Vesicle-Buster
- Payload
- [http://partsregistry.org/cgi/partsdb/pgroup.cgi?pgroup=iGEM2010&group=Berkeley Parts Submitted]
- Results
- Judging
- Clotho
- Human Practices
- Team Resources
- Who We Are
- Notebooks:
- [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Berk2010-Daniela Daniela's Notebook]
- [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Berk2010-Christoph Christoph's Notebook]
- [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Berk2010-Amy Amy's Notebook]
- [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Berk2010-Tahoura Tahoura's Notebook]
- [http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Berk2010-Conor Conor's Notebook]
Vesicle Buster
We derived the vesicle buster device from a construct built in the Anderson Lab and intended to be used in a mammalian system. There were several design challenges the vesicle buster had to satisfy in order to properly function in our delivery scheme. Because of the short time window between ingestion and digestion, the vesicle buster had to be constitutively expressed and ready to act upon self lysis. Stable expression of the vesicle buster was accomplished by placing it under the control of Pcon, a constitutive promoter. Since the bacteria stably express the vesicle buster, the device also cannot harm the bacteria and must act only on the choanoflagellate’s membrane. This specificity was satisfied by using PFO and PLC. PFO acts only on a cholesterol-based membrane and does not affect E. coli’s cell wall. PLC also targets phsopholipids found only in eukaryotic membranes. Finally, once the food vesicle is opened and its contents are released into the cytoplasm, PLC and PFO must be prevented from breaking down any other membrane and creating further damage to the choanoflagellate. For this reason, degradation tags were added to these enzymes.
