Team:Valencia UPV/Achievements

Valencia UPV iGEM 2015

Medals

bronze medal

  • Register for iGEM, have a great summer, and attend the Giant Jamboree, done!
  • Complete the Judging form.
  • Description of the team's project using the iGEM wiki, and document the team's parts.
  • Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree -we hope you like it.
  • Create a page which must clearly attribute work done by the students and distinguish it from work done by others, including host labs, advisors, instructors, sponsors, professional website designers, artists, and commercial services.
  • Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry. You may also document a new application of a BioBrick part from a previous iGEM year: we submitted BBa_K1742002 and BBa_K1742003


bronze medal

  • Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.
    • Reporter of the recombinase PhiC31 (BBa_K1742008) and reporter of the recombinase Bxb1 (BBa_K1742006) work as expected in our project. Check it here
  • Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry
  • Demonstrate how your team has identified, investigated and addressed one or more of these issues in the context of your project (ethics, sustainability, social justice, safety, security, intellectual property rights...)
    • We studied the safety concerns our project could have as a transgenic plant, together with the legallity of this kind of products in Europe and the need of a medical control in the case of drugs production.
    • Given the choice of drug production in our device, we decided to make it useful and important, so we researched about what drugs could be really necessary to produce in places like the Third World. Check here our conclusions.


gold medal

  • Demonstrate an innovative Human Practices activity that relates to your project
    • Our team has created a virtual reality which allows everybody to have access to a synthetic biology lab. Also, it makes possible to teach in an easy and comprehensive way what SynBio is and how it works.
  • Help a registered iGEM team from another university in a significant way by characterizing a part:
    • We developed a satisfactory collaboration with Norwich team, by testing their plant-expression constructs in our lab. They sent us their Mo-Flippers, which allow to convert our Golden Braid assemblies to BioBrick standard. Aditionally, we will be participating along with the Cambrige team in the plant workshop in the Jamboree!
    • Our team and Tuebingen team joined forces and made a modellingcollaboration, as they are working with the same inductor as us.
    • We also participated in small surveys in order to help a bit other teams, as we consider any help given is valuable.
  • Improve the function OR characterization of a previously existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team, or by your own team in in a previous year of iGEM):
    • PhiC31 (BBa_K1132009)has been proved to work in Nicotiana benthamiana plants. It has been also codon optimized for its use in plants in order to improve its function (BBa_K1742004).
    • ePDZ (BBa_K1470005) has been tested in plants bound to AsLOV, with good results.


Achievements

Design of a synthetic biological circuit that acts as an eukaryotic decoder able to produce 2N outputs in response to N inputs. Results: Circuit

  • The circuit is genetically controlled by applying only two different light wavelengths inputs due to the implemented optogenetic elements.
  • The circuit has memory. It is able to ‘remember’ sequential light inputs in order to obtain the desired output due to the implementation of phage recombinases.
  • Capable to process the information remotely according to people specific needs thanks to the use of light as inducers .


An in silico approach of the biological decoder that has allowed a wide understanding of the key control elements for a proper functioning of the circuit. Results: Modeling

  • Identifying the key components which are critical in order to get the desired response of our device: fast enough recombinases, good light sensing of optogenetically controlled switches.
  • Exploring conditions to improve the performance of our circuit, reducing the time needed to majorly produce the desired output: different number of gene copies or sequences of light inputs.
  • Obtaining optimal conditions that ensure the highest production of the chosen output as fast as possible with the minimum waste of resources, obtaining the best light inputs.

Construction and testing of the key genetic elements composing the synthetic circuit:

Future perspectives

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