Team:Edinburgh/Ideas

From 2011.igem.org

Revision as of 14:06, 7 June 2011

Insert random project ideas here, no matter how crazy. These are not (yet) ideas we're seriously considering, but just whatever came into our heads at some point... Members may also wish to read the project ideas from last year.

• Last year's winner used DNA as a scaffold to latch proteins onto, via DNA binding domains. Could two such domains be used to link two replicons together, for purposes of increasing recombination frequency?

• E. coli lacks a Type II secretion system. (This is one of the ways bacteria can export a protein.) Add one! Test by export of a protein with signal added.
  • Comment from CF: actually, E. coli does possess a type II secretion system but it is normally inactive. When activated, it leads to secretion of a chitinase. You could use our BRIDGE system to make the necessary genetic modifications to have this pathway switched on in normal growth.

• Create a juxtacrine signalling pathway for E. coli. Probably impossible due to lipopolysaccharide. (Juxtacrine signalling is signalling by physical contact.)
  • Comment from CF: there have been some bizarre recent papers about bacteria being connected together by 'nanotubes', as well as a growing body of literature about electrically conductive pili (nanowires), but I'm not sure either of these systems is well enough characterized yet to form the basis of a project.
  • Comment from LK: I think this idea is similar to neural networks - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network - if that was possible to model using E. coli, it would be awesome.

• (Chris French's idea) A sensor based on fusion of antibody domain to a signal transducing domain.

• Use the BRIDGE protocol to edit the chromosome of E. coli to report when a plasmid has been successfully introduced, e.g. by DNA binding proteins that would recognise the plasmid and cause some sort of effect.

This was the old Navbox for Edinburgh; now it's obsolete...