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From 2010.igem.org

Survival Resuls & Conclusions

Salt tolerance

We tested the growth of our bbc1 construct (biobrick # K398108) as stated in our characterization page.

The growth rates were determined for the exponential fase (using a trendline). The results are visible in the following chart.

At 0.2 M some effects of the hightened salt stress start to appear, at this concentration our biobrick (BBa_108) shows a significant increase in growth rate in comparison to our background (BBa_027). At higher salt concentrations the salt stress cuases a multitude of effects and as our biobrick simply counters one, our strain also shows effects of higher salt stress. In conclusion one can see that our biobrick is indeed functional at concentrations greater then 0.3 M Sodium Chloride. The general increase in tolerance varies between 10 and 35% depending on the Sodium Chloride concentration.

Alkane tolerance (BBa_K398406)

The solvent tolerance cluster was expressed on E. coli K12 and tested under different amounts of n-hexane. The results suggest that this part gives to cells an advantage when there's a lot of n-hexane around. The parental strain E. coli K12 seems to grow really slow at 10% (v/v) of n-hexane/M9 mixture.

Whereas our E. coli 406 doesn't have any problem at all.

View BBa_K398406 in the parts registry

Specified Components <partinfo>K398406 SpecifiedComponents</partinfo>

Designer: <partinfo>K398406 Designer</partinfo>

Future prospects

We hope that the salt tolerance can be increased further by adding systems (such as ion pumps) to ensure the intracellular threshold and minimize the effects of salt stress even further. As the host organism would then be able to maintain growth at lethal concentrations of both salt and alkanes. This would allow future generations of igemmers to create cultures in a variety of different media, opening a new field of possibilities.