Team:Edinburgh

Welcome to Edinburgh's 2011 iGEM effort, a.k.a. Team Synergy.

This year we will create microscopic "bioreactors", consisting of scaffolds for various enzymes to carry out reactions in the extracellular environment. The hope is that, by combining the activity of multiple synergistic enzymes in a small space, high efficiency will be achieved. At least 4 systems are being considered:

• As a baseline, use bacteria as the scaffold, and attach enzymes by cell-surface display techniques.

• As a modified version of the above, use bacteria, but concentrate the enzymes on a small part of it such as the flagella.

• As a fairly novel concept, use M13 phage as the scaffold, and attach enzymes by phage-display techniques to the pVIII coat protein.

• As a modified version of the above, attach multiple such phage to beads via the pIII protein, making a larger "reactor".

As example systems, we will try to use cellulases as our enzymes of interest. While we're at it, it makes sense to create something from the sugar we will generate. This would involve creation of a biorefinery.