Team:Copenhagen/Project

From 2011.igem.org




Table of Contents






CyperMan to the

Rescue

 

 

CyperMan

A CYP is an enzyme with hydroxylation powers. The hydroxylation performed by CYPs are expensive to produce with conventional chemical methods and it can therefore be greatly beneficial to utilize our CyperMans as little synthetic biology factories. Read more.


We have been working on two parallel projects, with two different aims. They are described in more detail below. The project regarding the human p450's was unfortunately put to a halt. This is why our focus has been on the project involving the cytochrome p450's from plants (the "Kill fungi" project).

CyperMan - Kills fungus

We hope to be able to develop bacteria that can kill fungus.
We will introduce a biological system to ''E.coli'' utilizing the plant cytochrome p450 79’s ability to produce small molecules called oximes which are toxic to fungus, as they inhibit the ability of the mitochondrial peroxidases to breakdown potentially harmful hydrogen peroxides. The oximes are produced from aminoacids - phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan. Read more.


CyperMan - Saves the Fish

We hope to find and possibly optimize a biological system which can be introduced in bacteria and lead to the removal of PPCP (pharmaceutical and personal care products) pollutants in water. We intend to transform E.coli bacteria with different combinations of the several membrane bound human cytochrome p450 and examine our different cytochrome p450 transformed E.coli bacteria and their ability to impede estrogenic activity water. Read more.



Impact factors:

Our project has the aim to characterize different subfamilies of Cytochrome p450 as a BioBrick and thus add it to the partsregistry of BioBricks, a continuously growing collection of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems (partsregistry.org). Hence our project contributes to the expansion of the partsregistry, benefitting all researchers with interest in these particular proteins. The partsregistry is founded on an open source philosophy, a philosophy we see as a great advantage for development and improvement of the number BioBricks already existing. The addition of different cytochrome p450 to this catalogue will perhaps encourage other groups to look at other aspects of the many functions of p450's and thus contribute to the formation of new biological systems – further expanding the field of synthetic biology.


Comments or questions to the team? Please mail us at igemcopenhagen@gmail.com