The Sphereactor Project

Over millennia, eukaryotic cells have evolved sophisticated organelles, which enabled them to partition their cytoplasmic contents into functional sectors (e.g. the nucleus for storage of genetic material).Such compartmentalisation allows greater efficiency of cellular processes,where each organelle is allocated a set of specific metabolic tasks. Some prokaryotes have also developed a method of forming intracellular subdivisions called bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) by producing a set of proteins that ‘cage in’ a reaction pathway to make it more efficient. One such set of proteins is expressed from the propanediol utilisation (Pdu) operon in Salmonella enterica. Our team aims to design and construct a versatile synthetic microcompartment - The Sphereactor - using genes from the Salmonella pdu operon and an E. coli chassis. In conjunction with new biobricks, and those made by other iGEM groups in the past, we aim to test a universal targeting signal that can be used to pack the Sphereactor with enzymes. This will also help us understand the versatility of our microcompartment and to expand our BMC approach into a wide variety of new applications.