Team:UTP-Panama/Project

ABSTRACT

UNDER MODIFICATION AT THIS MOMENT

For plants nitrogen is the nutrient in most demand, but too much is as bad as too little; excess of nitrogen or an imbalance of nitrogen compared with other nutrients can make plants more prone to pest and disease attack. Our goal is to improve the work done by Team BCCS-Bristol 2010, whose BB expresses fluorescent signals upon nutrient detection, producing a high-resolution nutrient distribution map of arable land. The ratio of two fluorescent signals (red and green) allows farmers to quantify soil nutrient content. To achive our goal, we're going to build a stronger sensor by ligating GeorgiaTech's 2010 BB and UNAM-CINVESTAV's 2010 cold shock promoter. GaTech attribution is based on Alternative Oxidase (AOX), which is a terminal oxidase protein that dissipates heat during a process of electron transfer and improves bacterial functioning in cold shock environments helping crops to avoid potential damage from frosts.

UNAM-CINVESTAV's project is based in building a BB that enables Escherichia coli to produce an antifreeze protein, AFP at less than 15 degrees Celsius, this protein will avoid ice crystal formation and will make posible the cell survival at low tempertures. In conclusion our final objetive is to take bristol BB to have the ability not just to sense nitrogen at high tempratures but also at low ones , making the BB much employable in other places were the temperature can be as low as 15 degrees Celcius.

The orignal idea: July 15

Traditional Engineering fields as Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, Agricultural, etc. have been working for last two centuries separately from Biological develops (life sciences). The UTP-Panama Team is decided to brake this paradigm in the Republic of Panama. To accomplish this goal, the UTP-Panama Team is working to develop what we call "'SynBio Engineering Tool Kit", the manufacturing of engineering tools obtained from biological resources. At this moment, Engineering groups are designing projects in different fields, using the biological devices to improve and solve traditional engineering issues. In this sense, the proposed works are:

Agricultural & Environmental Engineering

• Nitrogen Area: introduce chemotaxis to BioBrick BBa_K381001 develop by the Bristol 2010 iGEM Team, to make a dynamics Nitrate-nitrite sensor. The main goal of this area (future) is to express LegHemoglobine and other nitrogen fixation molecules in E.Coli.

• Phosphates sensing: BBa_K116401 & BBa_K116404.

• pH sensing: Taiwan BacToKidney pH sensors BBa_K116001 & BBa_K116002

Mechanical & Material Sciences Engineering

• Biopolimer Area: continue the Virgina (2008), Utah State (2009) and Insa-Lyon 2010 develop in the field of Bioplastic-Biopolymers through expression genes for PHA, PHA, and PHC.

• Heat Production: uses and improvement of Gatech Biobrick BBa_K410000, on mechanical engineering.

Electrical Engineering

• Biosensing

• Light Sensitive proteins: work with BBa_K191003

• Creation of electrical circuits

Project Details

Part 2

The Experiments

Part 3