Latest revision as of 02:54, 29 September 2011

Welcome to iGEM Panama Wiki

The Super Biosurfatator

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grafic design by Susan Baker (susan.baker@confettievents.biz)

Abstract

Our SynBio Project for iGEM 2011

Since late April 2010, the world has experienced a devastating oil spill throughout the Gulf of Mexico that has become one of the worst environmental disasters in worldwide history. Oil spills can pollute soil, air, and water and alter ecosystems for years. For this reason, last year’s Panama team designed a BioBrick that can biosynthesize rhamnolipids under the presence of rhamnose and β-hydroxyalkanoic acids. Rhamnolipids have emulsifying properties that reduce the surface tension of water, making the hydrocarbons easier to recover and biodegrade. This year we want to create a BioBrick that provides rhamnose for rhamnolipid biosynthesis and for other purposes as well. We also want to create a bioremediation system using existing biobricks that will produce the rhamnolipid and others to the task of biodegrading the hydrocarbons. The system will be designed to operate with a lysis gene that will kill the cells, this is for control the bacteria population during the bioremediation of the contamination site. But first we need to re-design and re-construct our 2010 BioBrick in order to provide Quality.

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 {{:Team:Panama/template|title=Welcome to iGEM Panama Wiki}}
+== ''' The Super Biosurfatator ''' ==
+[[File:comic_strip.jpg|699px|thumb|left|alt text]]
+grafic design by Susan Baker (susan.baker@confettievents.biz)
+[[File:iGEM.jpg|up|right|100px|link=https://2011.igem.org/Main_Page]]
+== '''Abstract''' ==
 '''Our SynBio Project for iGEM 2011'''
+Since late April 2010, the world has experienced a devastating oil spill throughout the Gulf of Mexico that has become one of the worst environmental disasters in worldwide history. Oil spills can pollute soil, air, and water and alter ecosystems for years. For this reason, last year’s Panama team designed a BioBrick that can biosynthesize rhamnolipids under the presence of rhamnose and β-hydroxyalkanoic acids. Rhamnolipids have emulsifying properties that reduce the surface tension of water, making the hydrocarbons easier to recover and biodegrade. This year we want to create a BioBrick that provides rhamnose for rhamnolipid biosynthesis and for other purposes as well. We also want to create a bioremediation system using existing biobricks that will produce the rhamnolipid and others to the task of biodegrading the hydrocarbons. The system will be designed to operate with a lysis gene that will kill the cells, this is for control the bacteria population during the bioremediation of the contamination site. But first we need to re-design and re-construct our 2010 BioBrick in order to provide '''Quality'''.
-There is considerable interest among the bio-industries in pharmacology and bioremediation products such as rhamnolipids. Rhamnolipids have proven healing and diseases fighting properties in curing or ameliorating psoriasis, decubitus ulcers, burns, and wounds, and there are indications that rhamnolipids will aid in the treatment of a range of dermatoses or exzemas. Since rhamnolipids can be used to form liposome, there are potential applications for using rhamnolipids for drug delivery. The use of rhamnolipids as biosurfactants is important in the remediation of oil spill areas. The cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill with rhamnolipids as biosurfactants was too expensive and complicated, therefore impractical for large-scale bioremediation. However, advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology can make rhamnolipids a viable solution to oil spill pollution cleanup, enhanced oil recovery, sludge removal, pesticide dispersal and wetting agents. In this project we modify a naturally occurring gene which synthesizes rhamnolipids to make it compatible with Assembly Standard 10 for rhamnosiltransferase 1 complex (rhlAB) gene expression in Escherichia coli for standardized rhamnolipid production. We submitted the first rhamnosyltransferase BioBrick to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts and this achievement earned us a bronze medal at the IGEM (International genetically Engineered Machine)2010 contest. This is the first time a Panamanian team participated in this Synthetic Biology contest and we became pioneers in Panama for trying to develop the Synthetic Biology field, a promising new applied science. In this second step of our project, (1) we will integrate other genetic standarized parts plus our rhlAB_BB to build a expression platform to create an E. coli-based factory, improving the efficiency and optimization of rhamnolipid biosynthesis using the BioBrick standard. (2)We will be focus in chemical, biological and physical characterization of our rhamnosyltranserase BioBrickTM (rh1AB_BB).
+[[File:IGEM LOGO.png|up|300px|thumb|center|alt text]]
-Some version of these devices may even include hydrocarbon sensors for Just-In-Time production of rhamnolipids.