The lac repressor is responsible for regulating the metabolism of lactose. In the absence of lactose, LacI forms a tetramer with identical subunits which appears as two dimers. Each dimer binds in the major groove of the DNA binding region which subsequently blocks the RNA polymerase from binding. In nature, allolactose will bind the repressor leading to transcription of the lac operon. Using IPTG as an inducer has the same effect as allolactose.

To the right is a small render of the LacI tetramer bound to its operator.

Construct

DNA Sequence

The above graph shows our initial mutants. We picked 87 potential mutants from transformation plates and ran them in our plate reader to quantitatively measure fluorescence. The green bars represent variants that are at least 1.5 standard deviations from the average wildtype expression level. After gathering this data, we picked seven mutants which represented a good range of expression. Not surprisingly, all of our LacI mutants are weaker than wildtype. After choosing our mutants, we did more rigorous characterization as outlined on our Data page.

The sequences above show our 7 LacI mutants. There are between 1 and 7 mutations in each sequence as indicated by the red bases. All 7 sequences have mutations between bases 100 and 200 which contains the known locations of the CAP binding site(bases 88-127) and LacI binding site (bases 166-200).