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iGEM team - Gothenburg, Chalmers University of Technology We are a team of 8 students from Chalmers University of Technology who will represent Gothenburg, SWEDEN in this year’s IGEM competition. IGEM stands for International Genetically Engineered Machines and is a competition based upon interdisciplinary collaboration of students on a Synthetic Biology project. The competition is held in MIT, Boston and is open to all universities from various countries world-wide. There are 180 teams participating this year with about 2000 students in total. We have started with a promising idea that combines the cutting edge technologies available in the field of Synthetic Biology. Our research basically includes the specification and designing of a biological system followed by the application of Molecular Biology techniques to build and test it experimentally. The premise of the competition for the students will be to learn engineering approaches and tools to organize, model, and assemble complex systems and to immerse themselves in applied molecular biology. In the project, we are investigating a biological phenomenon that is a part of insulin uptake mechanism, widely studied in Diabetic research. Our endeavor in the study is to visualize a part of the mechanism by making use of the Nobel Prize winning idea of the Green Fluorescent Proteins (GFPs). Hopefully, the project will provide us with auspicious outcomes to further improve the study of the disease.
Heat stress denaturases (distorts) proteins, causing weakening of polar bonds, unfolding, and exposure of hydrophobic groups. Stress beyond the cell's tolerance will induce cell death. The cellular stress response (heat-shock response) protects organisms from damage resulting from environmental stressors such as heat, UV light, trace metals, and xenobiotics. Stress genes are activated to rapidly synthesize stress proteins, which are highly conserved in biological evolution and play similar roles in organisms from bacteria to humans.
