Team:Edinburgh/Phage Reactors 1.0

From 2011.igem.org

A problem with the Phage Display idea is that it would probably be really hard to get the DNA from a BioBrick into the phage capsid.

Here's a simpler idea for using phage:

Phage as reaction scaffolds

Last year's winner used DNA as a scaffold for proteins that carry out reactions inside the cell.

I suggest we use phage as a scaffold for proteins that carry out reactions outside the cell. This will carry no requirement to get the coding DNA into the phage, and so is simpler.

There are probably many uses of an external reaction scaffold, so this technique is fairly general and could hopefully be used for many purposes, just by swapping in the correct BioBricks. One example is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosome cellulosome], which is a complex of cellulolytic enzymes that can be used to turn cellulose (tough plant material) into sugar, which can then be fermented into fuel. This is something Chris is quite expert on, so could be a good fit for the lab.

A modelling component

This project has a natural modelling component. Cellulosomes contain several different enzymes that assist in the conversion of cellolose into sugar. It would be good to optimise what the ratio of these various enzymes should be. Modelling will be needed for investigation of other possible page reactors as well.

Bacteria makes phage; BioBrick in bacteria codes for phage capsid proteins; these do something useful like degrade cellulose

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