Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Project/background

From 2011.igem.org

(Difference between revisions)
Line 23: Line 23:
<li><a class="list-2" href="/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Project/electricity">Solar Electricity Generation</a></li>
<li><a class="list-2" href="/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Project/electricity">Solar Electricity Generation</a></li>
<li><a href="/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Project/further">Further Applications</a></li>
<li><a href="/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Project/further">Further Applications</a></li>
 +
<li><a href="/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Project/Judging Form">Judging Form</a></li>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

Revision as of 17:09, 5 October 2011

Previous related projects

 

In 2010 iGEM competition, Queens-Canada team submited halorhodopsin from H. salinarum as biobricks and inserted this gene to C. elegans. However, it was not well characterized. This year, we are trying to clone halorhdopsin from N. pharaonis, which has already been successfully introduced and proved to perform complete light cycles in E. coli, to our biobrick system1. We aim to characterize the efficiency of this halorhodopsin to be a well-documented biobrick and a useful tool in E. coli.

 

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 ofspecific promoters, facilitating simply on/off switch and light-coupled communication. However, our design makes halorhodopsin not only a dynamic tunable light sensor – by coupling with chloride sensitive promoters (e.g. Pgad),but also an energy converter – by storing solar energy as osmolality potential and further converted to electricity. Our project would provide a wilder scope of applications from signal transduction and gene regulation to energy generation.

 

 

References

1.        Hohenfeld, I. Purification of histidine tagged bacteriorhodopsin, pharaonis halorhodopsin and pharaonis sensory rhodopsin II functionally expressed in Escherichia coli. FEBS Letters 442,198-202(1999).

 

 

 



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

©Copyright CUHK IGEM Team 2011