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Welcome to iGEM Panama Wiki

Our SynBio Project for iGEM 2011

There is considerable interest among the bio-industries in pharmacology and bioremediation products such as rhamnolipids. Rhamnolipids have proven healing and diseases fighting properties in curing or ameliorating psoriasis, decubitus ulcers, burns, and wounds, and there are indications that rhamnolipids will aid in the treatment of a range of dermatoses or exzemas. Since rhamnolipids can be used to form liposome, there are potential applications for using rhamnolipids for drug delivery. The use of rhamnolipids as biosurfactants is important in the remediation of oil spill areas. The cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill with rhamnolipids as biosurfactants was too expensive and complicated, therefore impractical for large-scale bioremediation. However, advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology can make rhamnolipids a viable solution to oil spill pollution cleanup, enhanced oil recovery, sludge removal, pesticide dispersal and wetting agents. In this project we modify a naturally occurring gene which synthesizes rhamnolipids to make it compatible with Assembly Standard 10 for rhamnosiltransferase 1 complex (rhlAB) gene expression in Escherichia coli for standardized rhamnolipid production. We submitted the first rhamnosyltransferase BioBrick to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts and this achievement earned us a bronze medal at the IGEM (International genetically Engineered Machine)2010 contest. This is the first time a Panamanian team participated in this Synthetic Biology contest and we became pioneers in Panama for trying to develop the Synthetic Biology field, a promising new applied science. In this second step of our project, (1) we will integrate other genetic standarized parts plus our rhlAB_BB to build a expression platform to create an E. coli-based factory, improving the efficiency and optimization of rhamnolipid biosynthesis using the BioBrick standard. (2)We will be focus in chemical, biological and physical characterization of our rhamnosyltranserase BioBrickTM (rh1AB_BB). Some version of these devices may even include hydrocarbon sensors for Just-In-Time production of rhamnolipids.