Revision as of 16:46, 5 June 2015

• Home
• Team
  • Meet the Team
  • Attributions
  • Collaborations
• Projects
  • Programming Spider Silk
  • Functionalizing Silk
  • Honeybee Silk
  • Materials Processing
  • Protein Cages
  • Human Practices
  • Interlab Study
• Parts
  • Team Parts
  • Basic Parts
  • Composite Parts
  • Part Collection
• Notebook
  • Programming Spider Silk
  • Functionalizing Silk
  • Honeybee Silk
  • Materials Processing
  • Protein Cages
  • Interlab Study
• Safety
• Judging

HONEYBEE SILK PROJECT

Goals

The goal of this project is to recombinantly express honeybee silk proteins, with the intention of creating synthetic honeybee silk fibers. We hope to develop protocols to efficiently produce the raw protein, process the protein into various materials, and characterize these materials. Furthermore, by conjugating the honeybee protein with other proteins, we aim to create honeybee silk materials with a wide array of properties and functionalities.

Achievements

As of 5/16 we are well on our way to establishing a strong foundation for this project. We have cloned some honeybee sequences into biobrick approved format, and are on our way to expressing our first batch of honeybee silk protein. (For detailed achievements see below)

Cloning

We have successfully cloned and sequence verified two honeybee silk constructs into the igem psb1c3 plasmid backbone, in the correct biobrick format. A comprehensive list of our honeybee parts can be found here

• The first sequence is just the honeybee silk protein #3 in the psb1c3 backbone. The annotated sequence, along with further details on how we designed and cloned this biobrick can be found here. [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763000 BBa_K1763000]
• The second sequence is the same silk coding sequence, but with regulatory elements upstream for protein expression, including [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_R0010 BBa_R0010 Promoter] and [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_B0034 RBS BBa_B0034 ]. The sequence can be found here. [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763001 BBa_K1763001 ] along with Further details on the design and cloning of this biobrick.

Protein Expression

We have just finished our first round of honey bee silk expression from [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763001 BBa_K1763001]

What we are working on now

We are currently at the starting phases of honeybee silk protein expression. We have expressed [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763001 BBa_K1763001 ]. Next up, we will run our purified protein on an SDS PAGE gel to ascertain the purity of our purified silk protein. For our progress so far, see our lab notebook entries from 5/18,5/19, and 5/26

Raw lab notebook entries

• April 28 - May 6 = cloning of [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763000 BBa_K1763000] and [http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K1763001 BBa_K1763001 ]
• May 16-May 19 = Expressing Silk Protein in E. Coli.
• May 26-27 = Purifying Silk Protein