Team:Hong Kong HKU

CONTROLLABLE CELL DEATH AND
DNA DEGRADATION BY CRISPR CAS SYSTEM

Project Description

The rapid development of synthetic biology aroused concerns of biosafety due to the predictable behavior of synthetic organism. Accidental leakage of synthetic organism is one of the major concerns on application of synthetic organisms. It was hypothesized that leakage of synthetic microorganisms may lead to transfer of synthetic DNA to wild type organisms and disruption of ecosystem which may eventually result in unpredictable consequent. In the past few years, several iGEM teams has discussed and reported the need for a standard safety cassette for synthetic biology. It was believed that the future of synthetic biology heavily hinges upon development of promising biosafety devices. Inspired by previous contributions in development of intrinsic containment device and recent advance in biotechnology, we designed a model of repressible killswitch based on CRISPR/Cas9 and CRISPR/Cas3 which aims to contain the GMM in particular conditions. Unfortunately due to limited time and technical difficulties, we were only able to construct the CRISPR/Cas9 containment device. In the future we hope to continue our project and contribute to the development of more comprehensive biosafety solution.

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