Team:Virginia Tech

Project Description:

Since the isolation of GFP in 1962, fluorescent proteins have become a ubiquitous tool for studying cellular processes and have recently been used in biosensors. To be effective for this application, however, they will need to be better characterized. To this end, the 2011 VT iGEM team is interested in finding and optimizing good fluorescent reporters which mature and degrade quickly, and which fluoresce brightly. This involves finding fast-folding fluorescent proteins and degradation tags that help destabilize and degrade them. We hope that this work will lay a good foundation for a more quantitative use of fluorescent reporters in the future.

To tackle this problem, we have split our team into three specialized groups focusing on the Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of our fluorescent protein constructs. This transdisciplinary approach allows us to work more quickly and achieve more ambitious goals

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