Difference between revisions of "Team:KU Leuven"
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| + | Patterns are fascinating, from the veins of a leaf to the stripes of a zebra. They are everywhere in nature, but why and how they are formed is not entirely understood. The way cells of multicellular organisms interact to generate a specific pattern has triggered our curiosity. We, the KU Leuven 2015 iGEM team, engaged in a project on the regulatory mechanisms of arrangement formation. Our mission is to engineer bacteria able to communicate and influence each other’s behaviour resulting in the assembly of predictable visible patterns. | ||
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| + | We designed a system in which two different <i>E. coli</i> cell types A and B, when mixed on an agar plate, organize themselves in a complex pattern. The regulatory circuit controls and steers two bacterial properties: cell-cell interaction and motility. This circuit makes bacterial cells of type A to produce an adherent protein and at the same time repel B-type cells. We expect the development of a pattern, where A-cells are clumping together and B-cells form circles around A-cells. This synthetic bacterial system will provide us with a platform to study the fundamentals of pattern formation. Such synthetic circuits will be useful, e.g., for engineering complex tissues consisting of different cell types. | ||
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Patterns are fascinating, from the veins of a leaf to the stripes of a zebra. They are everywhere in nature, but why and how they are formed is not entirely understood. We, the KU Leuven 2015 iGEM team, decided to work on the fundamental mechanisms behind pattern formation. The way the cells of multicellular organisms interact to generate a specific pattern has triggered our curiosity. Our mission is to create astonishing biological patterns with engineered bacteria on a petri dish to unravel the secrets of nature. We design a ‘proof of principle’ which can form the basis for further research. | Patterns are fascinating, from the veins of a leaf to the stripes of a zebra. They are everywhere in nature, but why and how they are formed is not entirely understood. We, the KU Leuven 2015 iGEM team, decided to work on the fundamental mechanisms behind pattern formation. The way the cells of multicellular organisms interact to generate a specific pattern has triggered our curiosity. Our mission is to create astonishing biological patterns with engineered bacteria on a petri dish to unravel the secrets of nature. We design a ‘proof of principle’ which can form the basis for further research. | ||
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Simulations from the cyber lab aid the wet lab in tuning the experimental conditions that lead to the desirable patterns. At the same time, results from the lab give the modeling team more data and parameters to fit their models to different conditions. Interaction between wet lab and cyber lab is clearly a crucial factor to the successful design our experiments. | Simulations from the cyber lab aid the wet lab in tuning the experimental conditions that lead to the desirable patterns. At the same time, results from the lab give the modeling team more data and parameters to fit their models to different conditions. Interaction between wet lab and cyber lab is clearly a crucial factor to the successful design our experiments. | ||
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Revision as of 22:30, 18 September 2015
Our Project
Patterns are fascinating, from the veins of a leaf to the stripes of a zebra. They are everywhere in nature, but why and how they are formed is not entirely understood. The way cells of multicellular organisms interact to generate a specific pattern has triggered our curiosity. We, the KU Leuven 2015 iGEM team, engaged in a project on the regulatory mechanisms of arrangement formation. Our mission is to engineer bacteria able to communicate and influence each other’s behaviour resulting in the assembly of predictable visible patterns.
We designed a system in which two different E. coli cell types A and B, when mixed on an agar plate, organize themselves in a complex pattern. The regulatory circuit controls and steers two bacterial properties: cell-cell interaction and motility. This circuit makes bacterial cells of type A to produce an adherent protein and at the same time repel B-type cells. We expect the development of a pattern, where A-cells are clumping together and B-cells form circles around A-cells. This synthetic bacterial system will provide us with a platform to study the fundamentals of pattern formation. Such synthetic circuits will be useful, e.g., for engineering complex tissues consisting of different cell types.
Wiki Game
Browsing through iGEM team wiki’s can be a time consuming job. To make this easier and fun we invented a wiki game to help you discover the nook and corner of our wiki. It allows you to get a simple overview of our wiki. Play our wiki game!
Contact
Address: Celestijnenlaan 200G room 00.08 - 3001 Heverlee
Telephone: +32(0)16 32 73 19
Email: igem@chem.kuleuven.be
