Meta Analysis of the Registry
The Registry of Standard Biological Parts has been a longstanding partner of iGEM. The promotion of synthetic biology communication and cooperation have become tenants of every iGEM team. The database was an incredible step forward in biological research and standardization. And for this reason, we must now reevaluate the registry.
Moore's Law and Biology
Moore’s Law is a principle developed in 1975 claiming the maximum number of transistors per microchip doubles every two years. Analogous to the technological limits in computer engineering, biology has seen a similar trend in the cost of sequencing and synthesizing DNA. The high cost of synthetic biology is what initially drove the movement to physical databases of biological parts. For example, a gene segment costing $800 when the Registry of Biological Parts was conceived, while only costing around $30 by modern standards. In the last decade and a half, synthesis prices have halved approximately every 2.5 years.
This registry, if it serves as a replacement and utility to the physical construction of biological parts, is a rapidly depreciating database due simply to the trend in technological costs. This direction has prevented the registry from gaining momentum in research groups. Only 11% of the 70 iGEM team we contacted said to have used the registry to order parts. At the time of this study (August 28th, 2015), only 69% of requests made to the registry were processed. Of the requests that were completed, it took on average 7.5 days to process the request internally. Additionally, only 2.5 requests were made per day in 2015 with each part averaging $130 from IDT (each part was pulled from the request form and processed through IDT). Furthermore, studies have suggested 5’ cut sites can have significant impacts on gene expression in function (Lou 2012).
• What is the role of Insulin in the Human body?
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that removes glucose from the blood. In healthy individuals, excess glucose is readily removed from the blood stream by a proportional production of insulin. In persons with diabetes mellitus however; the body is either resistant to insulin, or it has a reduced capacity to produce insulin. Those individuals require an external source of insulin.
• Why are we expressing human Insulin?
The ability to produce recombinant human Insulin cheaply has long been a lucrative goal. There are millions of people worldwide who are dependent on Insulin derived from production methods that make the product expensive -and further yet- potentially dangerous.Our team thinks that the current production methods for human Insulin are inefficient and can be optimized by being expressed in Pichia pastoris.
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