Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Project/overview

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<h2>Overview</h2><br/><br/>
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<h3>Previous related projects</h3>
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<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">Halorhodopsin</a>, a light-driven ion pump originated from <em>Halobacterium</em>, employs light to transport chloride ions into cells uni-directionally against concentration gradient. Since chloride ion is a ubiquitous and essential element in most biological systems, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">halorhodopsin</a> has the fascinating property to transform solar energy, the most abundant energy in the world, into intracellular chloride ion level. However, this specificity of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">halorhodopsin</a> has not been well characterized and regulated in previous competition. It is of our great interest to characterize its properties, and eventually utilize them in our project, seeking the possibilities to benefit synthetic biology and the human society.</p>
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<p>In our project, we integrated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">halorhodopsin</a> into functional biobricks. Based on the characterized properties of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">halorhodopsin</a>, we have furthermore developed and implemented two innovative applications: Light-coupled computer-aided expression platform and entropy-mixing electricity generation. The exciting results show us the power and the potential of this fascinating tool. We are glad to introduce our achievements in the project session.</p>
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In 2010 iGEM competition, Queens-Canada team submited <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">Halorhodopsin</a> from <em>H. salinarum</em> as biobricks and inserted this gene into <em>C. elegans</em>. However, it was not well characterized. This year, we are trying to clone halorhdopsin from <em>N. pharaonis,</em> which has already been successfully introduced and proved to perform complete light cycles in <em>E. coli, </em>to our biobrick system<sup>1</sup>. We aim to characterize the efficiency of this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">Halorhodopsin</a> to be a well-documented biobrick and a useful tool in <em>E. coli</em>.
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In previous iGEM projects, various light sensors have been developed, including red light sensor (UT Austin, 2004), green light sensor (Tokyo-Nokogen, 2009) and blue light sensor (University of Edinburgh, 2010). They are all light-induced fusion transcription factors that trigger gene expression under the control of specific promoters, facilitating simply on/off switch and light-coupled communication. However, our design makes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">Halorhodopsin</a> not only a dynamically tunable light sensor – by coupling with chloride sensitive promoters (e.g. P<sub>gad</sub>), but also an energy converter – by storing solar energy as osmolality potential and further converted it into electricity. Our project would provide a wilder scope of applications from signal transduction and gene regulation to energy generation.
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References
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1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hohenfeld, I. Purification of histidine tagged bacteriorhodopsin, pharaonis <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">Halorhodopsin</a> and pharaonis sensory rhodopsin II functionally expressed in Escherichia coli. <em>FEBS Letters</em> <strong>442</strong>,198-202(1999).  
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<p>Besides the proof-of-concept designs in our projects, any design with the linkage of light and chloride ions can be accomplished by this tool. Thus, there are much more potential applications. We believe that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halorhodopsin">halorhodopsin</a> would be an exciting and useful biobrick in the near future.</p><br/><br/><br/>
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Latest revision as of 18:50, 28 October 2011

Overview



Halorhodopsin, a light-driven ion pump originated from Halobacterium, employs light to transport chloride ions into cells uni-directionally against concentration gradient. Since chloride ion is a ubiquitous and essential element in most biological systems, halorhodopsin has the fascinating property to transform solar energy, the most abundant energy in the world, into intracellular chloride ion level. However, this specificity of halorhodopsin has not been well characterized and regulated in previous competition. It is of our great interest to characterize its properties, and eventually utilize them in our project, seeking the possibilities to benefit synthetic biology and the human society.

In our project, we integrated halorhodopsin into functional biobricks. Based on the characterized properties of halorhodopsin, we have furthermore developed and implemented two innovative applications: Light-coupled computer-aided expression platform and entropy-mixing electricity generation. The exciting results show us the power and the potential of this fascinating tool. We are glad to introduce our achievements in the project session.

Besides the proof-of-concept designs in our projects, any design with the linkage of light and chloride ions can be accomplished by this tool. Thus, there are much more potential applications. We believe that halorhodopsin would be an exciting and useful biobrick in the near future.




"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." - Theodore Levitt

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