Team:Edinburgh UG/Medal Criteria

Edinburgh iGEM 2018

Medal Criteria

Bronze Medal Criteria

#1 Registration and Giant Jamboree Attendance

We had a great iGEM season and see you all at the Giant Jamboree!

#2 Competition Deliverables

While reading our wiki, we hope you are excited to see our poster and presentation as well! We have also submitted a Judging form.

#3 Attributions

Our team is proud to state that we conceived the idea for Maxed OOT and subsequently designed and carried out all experiments ourselves. That said, there are many advisors who we would like to thank for helping to provide continuous advice and support, because, without them, we would not have been able to have achieved our goals. You can read more about people, teams and companies who helped us here.

#4 Characterization / Contribution

We successfully participated in InterLab study (see here). We performed and obtained successful results after performing both plate Reader and CFU and Flow Cytometry protocols.

Also, we characterised two parts from iGEM 2012 Paris Bettencourt. You can find out more about our improved parts here.

Parts improved Description Supporting information
BBa_K914009 P1003* Ser133->Amber Codon contain a kanamycin resistance gene with one two serine -> amber codon mutation
BBa_K914018 P1003** Kan resistant gene with 2 Amber Codon contain a kanamycin resistance gene with two serine -> amber codon mutations

Silver Medal Criteria

#1 Validated Part / Validated Contribution

Our validated parts:

Parts Validated Description Supporting information
BBa_K2725016 J23108 - SupD Serine amber suppressor tRNA gene under J23108 Anderson promoter
BBa_K2725004 FabV + Low expression cassette Triclosan resistance gene from Vibrio fischeri
BBa_K2725013 KanR 10* P1003 kanamycin resistance with 10 amber stop codons

#2 Collaboration

We have done Modelling Collaboration with team Vilnius-Lithuania. Besides attending lots of meetups, we also hosted a meetup with Newcastle iGEM 2018 team

#3 Human Practices

(See gold medal criteria #1 Integrated Human Practices)


Gold Medal Criteria

#1 Integrated Human Practices

The Edinburgh UG project looks to solve a fundamental problem facing synthetic biology - environmental release - with the development of a novel chassis. However, we also had to ensure our chassis had all the basic characteristics that a synthetic biologist would require. Therefore we consulted with a number of active researchers in synthetic biology in order to gauge what they would require from an ideal chassis. These consultations became a basis of our project design as a whole, and often changed the direction of each project part individually. We recorded these consultations and decisions on a timeline (link) so that anyone may follow and understand the progression of our project.

#2 Improve a Previous Part or Project

We improved the previous part BBa_K914009 which contain a kanamycin resistance gene with one serine -> amber codon mutations. By increasing the number of serine -> amber codon mutations to 5 in BBa_K2725012 they confer a decreased kanamycin resistance in the absence of a suppressor tRNA, reducing the leakiness of the gene.

Parts Description Supporting information
BBa_K914009 P1003* Ser133->Amber Codon Improved the characterisation
BBa_K2725012 P1003 Cassette with 5 amber stop codon Improved the previous part BBa_K914009

#3 Model Your Project

Rational design of biobrick parts and protocols is an iGEM tenet that Team Edinburgh UG have embraced this year through mathematical modelling. The mechanistic modelling of our DNA degrading killswitch was used to check for viability and to decide which promoters and ribosome binding sites to use in the final parts. Modelling the probability of failure of our Semantic Containment system to prevent horizontal gene transfer allowed us to calculate the failure rate of our parts combining engineering safety techniques with Synthetic Biology. Using ordinal logistic regression we were able to use growth curve data to identify which of our Semantic Containment parts was present within an organism providing a quick way to diagnose instances of Semantic Containment failure. For more information please read here.

#4 Demonstration of Your Work

All aspects of our project combine to provide a novel chassis for Synthetic Biology: Maxicells. These maxicells are easy to use and can be safely deployed into the environment through the use of our Triple Lock System (link)

• We have assessed various methods of maxicell production and have concluded that they are easy to make through UV exposure and homing endonuclease action.

• The Triple Lock System - Colicin E2 kill switch, semantic containment and triclosan resistant plasmid backbone was produced


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