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Team:Imperial College London/Project Auxin Specifications
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<li><p>We decided to use polymerase extension assembly rather than standard restriction-ligation based assembly because...</li></pi> | <li><p>We decided to use polymerase extension assembly rather than standard restriction-ligation based assembly because...</li></pi> | ||
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<p><b>3. Achieving adequate auxin expression levels in our chassis to enhance root growth in our plant model.</b> </p> | <p><b>3. Achieving adequate auxin expression levels in our chassis to enhance root growth in our plant model.</b> </p> | ||
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Revision as of 13:49, 17 September 2011
Module 2: Auxin Xpress
Auxin, or Indole 3-acetic acid (IAA), is a plant growth hormone which is produced by several soil bacteria. We have taken the genes encoding the IAA-producing pathway from Pseudomonas savastanoi and expressed them in Escherichia coli. Following chemotaxis towards the roots and uptake by the Phyto Route module, IAA expression will promote root growth with the aim of improving soil stability.
Specifications
1. A simple auxin producing pathway that can be expressed in our chassis.
Although auxin is a plant hormone, many plant growth promoting (PGP) bacteria express auxin to provide to symbiotic plants in exchange for nutrients. There are several different pathways that can produce auxin (fig 1)
Fig 1. Auxin producing pathways [1]
2. Designing fragment sequences amenable to polymerase extension assembly methods at a minimal cost.
We decided to use polymerase extension assembly rather than standard restriction-ligation based assembly because...
3. Achieving adequate auxin expression levels in our chassis to enhance root growth in our plant model.
The aim of expressing auxin in our chassis is to enhance plant root growth and ultimately improve soil stability. Therefore we need to model auxin concentration on root growth to determine the optimum concentration for the roots without inducing toxicity.
4. Modularity of parts to facilitate use in different devices and chassis.
To promote open-source use of the BioBricks we will submit, we are designing the part sequences to be easily interchangeable. This will also allow insertion of different promoters to tweak expression levels of auxin.
References
[1]Spaepen S. et al., 2007. Indole-3-acetic acid in microbial and microorganism-plant signaling. Federation of European Microbiological Societies Microbiology Reviews , 31, pp.425–448.
