Team:Kyoto

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Summary

We created new E.coli which hunts and eats insects. As such we named it Carnivorous E.coli. Carnivorous E.coli emits light when it is hungry. This will attract insects to it. Then, it secretes a viscous substance to catch the insects. The insects caught are digested by the protease and chitinase in the secretion. Long story short, our Carnivorous E.coli can hunt!

Team Hunger

It is a burden for the E.coli to emit light. However, this burden can be reduced by using the nitrogen regulatory proteins, NtrB and NtrC, to activate a certain promoter when the supply of nitrogen is not enough.

Team Luminescence

There are many ways to attract bugs, for instance using pheromone, but it is difficult for E.coli to synthesize complex compounds like pheromone. Carnivorous E.coli emits light and attracts bugs like glowworms by using Bioluciferase from 2010 Cambridge.

Team Digestion

An insect body is covered with a hard integument containing mainly chitin. To decompose the integument, we used ChiA gene, which encode chitinase. In order to measure the chitinase activity of the culture supernatant, we evaluated the effects of the medium and cell growth.

Achievement

Human Practice

As synthetic biology is a comparatively new way of understanding life, we plan to develop this area much further. However,this area entails problems of bioethics and so we must consider these problems as well. Unfortunately, Japanese high school students do not have many chances to come across these topics. We hope to offer high school students more opportunities to think on them. That's why we targeted them and performed these activities.