Team:ULB-Brussels

One of the most basic actions of all engineers is the assembly and the deletion of fundamental parts (bricks). Bearing in mind that one of the purposes of the iGEM is to make the link between synthetic biology and engineering sciences, we'd like to manage those simple steps in the easiest way in biological systems.

Unfortunately, in E. coli, it's still difficult to do that in one step because of the lack of genetic tools to catalyze homologous recombination with linear DNA. By the assembly of a unique plasmid containing different genes derived from phages, and the design and construction of helper plasmids, we aim to provide the iGEM with a system that would confer to E. coli the useful properties of yeasts.

We called this plasmid Pindel, acronym for plasmid of insertion and deletion of genes.

In order to ensure high quality work, we build our project on three complementary and parallel axes :

• The first one is lead by a group called "Wet lab" and composed of biologists. They are charged to propose a design and to construct and experiment the tool for characterisation.
• The second one is based on a group called "Modelling Team" and composed of mathematicians and physicists. They model the genetic circuit with parameters derived from the characterisation in order to find the optimal design and to refine the initial one.
• And finally, the third one, organised by the "Human Practise team" composed of students from social sciences, will discuss the ethical questions asked by people when living organisms are being handled. They aim to understand people's fears with statistical survey, to give them inform them about synthetic biology and to check the impact of our intervention on their initial fears.