Team:Amsterdam/Project/Description
From 2011.igem.org
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2011/4/47/Ams11_bg.jpg)
icE. coli
Escherichia coli's optimal growth temperature is 37°C. Its growth rate decreases sharply at temperatures deviating from this optimum, and growth beneath 8°C is impossible for wildtype E. coli. The aim of the project is to increase the cold tolerance of E. coli, allowing it to grow faster at temperatures below 37°C. We expect to be able to culture the resulting strain at very low temperatures, possibly even at or below freezing point.
Our approach involves the expression of heterologous proteins in the Top10 E. coli strain. Following iGEM's standardized protocols as much as possible, we will create cold resistance BioBricks - or CryoBricks - out of different (combinations of) synthesized genes and parts submitted to the registry by previous iGEM teams.
Succesfully increasing E. coli's cold tolerance is valuable to both fundamental and applied science. One of many possible applications is replacing antibiotic resistance with cold resistance as a selecting factor in plasmid backbones. Our CryoBricks may also be useful in various projects of other iGEM teams. (See also our application and collaboration pages.)
CryoBrick Candidates
The proteins and parts listed below are currently being considered as viable CryoBrick candidates. That is to say, they will be synthesized or ordered from the registry, and combined with promoters, ribosome binding sites or terminators as required. We'll transform Top10 cells with the resulting constructs and characterize how they modulate the effect of temperature on growth speed. Note that the parts submitted by previous teams aren't exclusively enzyme coding regions, as they also include, for example, a promoter that's active at very low temperatures.
Synthesized genes
- Cpn10 - Part of Oleispira antarctica's Cpn10/Cpn60 chaperonin system
- Cpn60 - See above
- SheDnaK - A homolog of E. coli's DnaK found in Shewanella species
Parts submitted by previous teams
- (To be updated soon.)