Team:UIUC-Illinois/Project

Track Selection: New Application

Our project, E. chiver, drew inspiration from the commonly used CRIM system, a series of plasmids that allows the user to integrate constructs into lambdoid phage sites common to many bacterial chromosomes. Our E. chiver system adds several elements yielding new applications. Our team designed two E. chiver constructs utilizing Lambda and P21 machinery. Each can in theory be used to shuttle a plasmid construct between two forms: a single chromosomal insert and a high copy number plasmid. In their current designs the systems must function separately, but possible routes have been identified by our team to make the co-functioning of these systems possible. We can see elements of our project being used in drug delivery systems as a method to keep a gene of interest dormant unless in the correct condition/location, and with further exploration into the co-functioning routes it may be used to create a ‘bacterial filing cabinet’.

To create a system that allows a construct to be expressed at a high copy number when induced, but then file back into the chromosome as a stable integrant for energetically favorable storage. The ultimate end goal is to create a bacterial filing system, E. chiver, which allows the coexistence of multiple constructs with their copy number and integration tied to a unique inducer.

A simple analogy for our E. chiver project is a filing cabinet. The following are the basic components of the system and their workplace analogues.

Construct = Shuttle Plasmid = File

Gene of interest = File Contents

Chromosome = Filing Cabinet

Luckily for us, the basic machinery we need for our E. chiver design already exists. The machinery is that of the Lambdiod phage family (i.e. λ, P21, P22, HK022, φ80), as well as the conditional R6K origin of replication and its trans-acting factor pir. The following are basic descriptions of how these parts function.

Lambdoid phage machinery: Our main interest is the phage proteins excisionase (Xis) and integrase (Int), as well as the phage genetic element attP (phage attachment site) and the bacterial genetic element attB (bacterial attachment site). Xis and Int are responsible for the site-specific recombination event between attP and attB. The recombination event is reversible. The direction depends on the combination of proteins being expressed (see diagram below).

R6K origin and pir: The pir gene encodes the trans-acting protein that allows replication of an R6K origin2. When pir is turned on, a plasmid containing the R6K origin will be allowed to replicate, but when pir is not expressed the plasmid becomes a suicide vector (cannot replicate). The CRIM system takes advantage of this by placing an attP site in the R6K vector. When pir is off, the vector must insert into the chromosome or be lost.

CRIM (Conditional-Replication, Integration, Modular) plasmids utilize these factors and provide the current means of shuttling a construct into and out of a bacterial chromosome1. However, the design of this system requires manual labor in the form of helper plasmid transformations and subsequent selection procedures each time we wish to excise or integrate our construct (see below figure). In our design we rewire the CRIM machinery to place the integration and excision events under chemical inducers to eliminate this manual process. To tie back into the filing cabinet analogy, we are reworking the system to make the process of removing and replacing a file easier, and taking the first step toward allowing this system to be utilized outside of the laboratory by placing the filing system under environmental signals rather than laboratory procedures.