Wiki/Team:Imperial College London/Notebook/July 6

From 2011.igem.org

Revision as of 16:42, 6 July 2011

Rebekka Bauer
Action points:
-bios on the wiki
-sci-fi meeting
-characterisation talk
-come up with more ideas
-do more research on anti-venom and prodigiosin


Sci-Fi prodigiosin ideas (developed with Nick Kral and CJ from the RCA):
-use prodigiosin (red pigment) as the new "colour of health" (know something is sterile rather than assume it is)
-possible future uses: in decontamination/ as a "panic room"/ sterile hospice
-possible future products: hand gel, clothing (e.g. protective suits in bioreactor plants), decontamination paint (in hospitals etc)
-actual uses: anti-cancer (could be in a red drip, red pill?), anti-malarial (drug verification because pigment colour is hard to fake)
Eventually, this idea was scratched because optimising the production pathway does not contain enough synthetic biology. In addition, the compound is immunosuppressive (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleHtml/2008/CC/b719353j) and would therefore be disadvantageous to normal people. Many of the envisaged applications would only work with less problematic analogues of prodigiosin.

Brainstorming:
Venom and BAS ideas to be presented on Friday!
-desertification (overdone already)
-thermophiles (make them express melanin so they can be heated up by the sun, saving energy)
-cell-cell signal transduction (can be used as inhibition or activation)
-desalination (commercial membranes are probably more efficient)
-data storage in bacteria (use DNA to encode information has already been done but it might be useful to come up with a new way of retrieving the information. Storing data in RNA might be more efficient)
-ocean metals (retrieving valuable materials from sea water, main problem: materials are only present at really low concentration and might be hard to retrieve) -cross-linking of hair to something useful
-dictostylium
-using melanin for heat production from sound in bacteria. The heat could then be converted into an output, producing sound sensitive bacteria. Is melanin really able to detect sound??
-modifying silk worms?
-radiotrophic fungi (fungi that use gamma radiation to produce ATP - the pathway could be used in E. coli to absorb radioactivity but the exact pathway does not seem to be known (Wikipedia))
-serum bile acid as a biomarker of liver problems in pregnancy

Research for venom:
organise slides into problem, specifications needed to tackle problem, how to achieve specifications
-venom chosen: Asian cobra (one of the most common ones)
-Ming: summarise problem and specifications needed
-Chris: look at shark antibodies
-Nikki: look at in vivo mutagenesis (PCR mutagenesis would be too tedious)
-Frank: selection (FACS with GFP?)
-Rebekka: genetic circuit (detection mechanism - two component system?, suicide mechanism for cells that do not detect venom)