Team:Edinburgh UG/Part Collection

Edinburgh iGEM 2018

Part Collection

Semantic Containment System

These parts collectively provide proof of concept for a semantic containment system that can prevent a horizontally transferred gene being read and expressed by any environmental cell that has picked it up. Our probability modelling predicts that a gene that has 5 and 10 amber STOP codons substituted into the coding sequence will only be expressed 1 in every 1010 and 1 in every 1018 translation attempts. This is confirmed by growth curves for Top10 E. coli transformed with P1003 5* and P1003 10*. No kanamycin resistance is observed from these strains. When P1003 5* is expressed alongside J23108-supD , high level expression of the P1003 gene is achieved and confers kanamycin resistance in the strain. These parts together model a functional semantic containment system.

Part number Type Description Supporting information Part length (bp)
BBa_K2725012 Basic KanR 5* P1003 kanamycin resistance with 5 amber stop codons 967
BBa_K2725013 Basic KanR 10* P1003 kanamycin resistance with 10 amber stop codons 967
BBa_K2725016 Basic J23108 - SupD Serine amber suppressor tRNA gene under J23108 Anderson promoter 224

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