Team:Imperial College/Brainstorming
Brainstorming
For Future iGEMers
These are the ideas we had during brainstorming session, if you are inspired by the ideas we had, please feel free to use and be creative.
Diagnostics
- Utilising CRISPR arrays in a cell free system for a modular viral biosensor.
Energy
- Bacterial quantum dot synthesis for solar cells.
Environment
- Using denitrification pathways for recovery of nitrified water.
- Engineering organisms to degrade compounds from munitions.
- A gene drive for corals introducing adaptations to ocean acidification.
- A phage based kill switch.
Food & Nutrition
- Engineering lactococcus for nutrient enriched cheese.
Foundational Advance
- A fast RNA oscillator based on the repressilator using dCas9 and aptazymes.
- Creating a standardised logic gate architecture in mammalian cells.
- Using conjugation and fluorescent aptamers to give live in vivo readouts of data stored in DNA.
- Engineering heterocyst-like patterning in minD mutants.
- Using inteins to anchor proteins to the cell membrane.
- A 4-output dCas9 based toggle switch.
Information Processing
- A bacterial organ formed of different cultures seperated by permeable membranes that signalling molecules can pass between.
- Modelling the Suckers, Cheats and Grudgers evolutionary stable strategy in an E. coli co-culture.
Manufacturing
- Remediation of molecules using dead mini-cells.
- Biomining of metals by oxidising them to cause precipitation.
- Forming bacterial chains by localising adhesive proteins to the poles in order to produce strong biomaterials.
- Crosslinking enzymes biomaterials produced in vivo to generate catalytic biofilms.
- Producing camouflage dyes with reflectin proteins.
New Application
- Bacterial tattoo removal using enzymes that can degrade azo-dyes.
Therapeutics
- Linking chemotaxis to optogenetics in bacteria that synthesise drugs so they can be directed to a tumour.
