Function

Stress promoters respond differently to various types of stress that is placed on the cell. We wanted a promoter that would be downregulated in the presence of membrane stress caused by the over expression of ToxR. The design principle is to express ToxR under the control of this promoter such that the stress it causes drives negative feedback on its own production.

Assembly

The 34 stress promoters were PCRed from E. Coli MC1061 Genomic DNA. Basic parts were made in plasmids with pUC origins. A constitutive promoter (Pcon) was also cloned into a basic part as a control for characterization.

Characterization

Explanation of experiments! GRAPH!!!!

Experiments

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Notes

Expression Plasmid (banner)

Function

The expression plasmid consists of a stress promoter regulating the production of ToxR. This construct allows us to express enough ToxR to allow for the functionality we desire and at the same time have minimal affect on bacterial growth rate.

Assembly

Characterization

Experiments

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Notes

Reporter Plasmid (banner)

Function

The reporter construct will give us a fluorescent output that will correlate to the amount of transcriptional activity ToxR promotes on pctx. Since transcriptional activity by ToxR dimers depends on the strength of dimerization, the fluorescence can be correlated to how tight the ToxR monomers bind together.

Assembly

ToxR’s native target promoter ctx was PCRed out of V. Cholerae genomic DNA and made into a basic part. The promoter was then placed upstream of an rbs.ffGFP part using 2AB assembly.

Characterization

By cotransforming this reporter plasmid and the expression plasmid (see above) we were able to measure the strength of Pctx induction by ToxR.

Experiments

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Notes

Estrogen Receptor - ToxR chimera (banner)

Function

The human estrogen receptor is known to dimerize around estradiol. By fusing the human estrogen receptor to ToxR, we can create an estradiol biosensor and potentially an estradiol-inducible system.

Assembly

The estrogen receptor was refactored to optimally express in E. Coli and assembled using designed oligos and PCA (polymerase cycling assembly). The final protein was made into a basic part. Various sections of the estrogen receptor were PCRed into separate basic parts to create truncations that might give different behaviors to estradiol (see figure). The estrogen receptor was fused to ToxR’s C-terminus with Gly-Ser linkers and thus exposed to the periplasm when expressed in the cell.

Characterization

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Experiments

Notes