Giant Jamboree: We have successfully registered for the Jamboree, and have dates set for October 2018 for the team to attend. All ten members will attend alongside our supervisors.
Completion of Competition Deliverables: We have developed a wiki, poster, presentation and submitted the judging form.
Attributions: This can be seen at our Wiki page. Includes work done by us, the team, but also acknowledging help from our supervisors, lab supporters and multiple other researchers in many different fields.
Characterisation and/or contribution We successfully submitted InterLab and it has been approved.
Validated Part & Contribution:BBa_K2695000, BBa_K2695001, BBa_K2695003 We successfully expressed three new parts, the Chlorite dismutase from A. oryzae and A. suillum, and A. suillum signal peptide for PcrA fused to GFP. We also assayed all three for activity. All our parts can be seen on our parts page.
Collaboration: We have managed successful collaborations with teams from all over the world including Copenhagen, DTU Denmark, Newcastle and UCL. What we did, what we learnt and how we kept in touch can be seen on our collaborations page.
Human Practices: This played a key role in our project, as the idea of travelling to Mars is both exciting and scary for many people. Find out more about how we gained feedback and influences for our project on our human practices page.
Integrated Human Practices: We worked closely with stakeholders such as Professor Mike Allen when designing our bioreactor. The full details of the design process can be found here.
Improved Previous Part:BBa_K2695010. We improved the characterisation of Chlorite dismutase from D. aromatic by expressing it in E. coli and assaying its activity. For full details on how we improved Team Leiden 2016's part, BBa_K1938004 see our improved parts page.
Model Project: We used mathematical modelling to pick the best Chlorite dismutase for our Perchlorate reductase. Our model page shows the full details. Modelling also informed the perchlorate concentration in the bioreactor, and the bioreactor size.
Demonstration: The following evidence showed that our parts worked. Firstly we needed to determine if the signal peptides native to A. oryzae, A. suillum, D. aromatica and N. defluvii were functional in E. coli. To do this we engineered GFP to contain the signal peptides from these proteins and performed cell fractionation and a Western blot to assess whether the proteins was present in the periplasm. This Western blot showed that 3 of the 4 signal peptides were functional in E. coli, with the exception of N. defluvii. Next we performed the same Western blot analysis to determine if Chlorite dismutase were expressed in E. coli as present in the periplasm. This showed that 3 of the 4 were present, again with the exception of N. defluvii . Finally we assayed the activity of the Chlorite dismutase using a Clark electrode and showed oxygen generation from all the Chlorite dismustases in the presence of chlorite with the exception of the enzyme derived from N defluvii.
