Team:UCLA

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Welcome to iGEM 2015!

Your team has been approved and you are ready to start the iGEM season!

Project Descriptions (Due July 15th)

(very much a work in progress) Silky Coli: Exploring and designing unique modular parts for synthetic silk assembly and function.

The use of silk fibroin produced by both spiders and silkworms have recently arisen as a suitable alternative to synthetic fiber products for a wide variety of cosmetic, engineering, and biomedical opportunities. However, efforts to develop high-throughput production of silk fibroin via an in vivo approach have proven to be unsustainable and highly costly to process. Work to produce recombinant fibroin using high expression Escherichia coli chassis has shown to be both effective and scalable, but the difficulty in generating a large cloning library with monomeric MaSP1/2 subunits for polymerization with various affinity binding domains prevents the creation of modular silk fibroins that can perform an array of functions. To add modular and scalable affinity domains to nascent silk fibroins, a composite silk construct containing the N- and C- terminal domains derived from Nephila clavipes spider silk constructions ligated to a reporting marker (initially, super folder GFP) flanked by Type IIS restriction sites was cloned and expressed in E. coli colonies. Preliminary results indicate high expression levels driven by an IPTG-inducible promoter hours after induction, and IMAC purification indicates high degree of protein yield and purity via electrophoretic analysis. Further characterization must be conducted to verify protein conformation and function using blotting analysis, spectroscopy, and fluorescence assaying.

In our exploration of silk and silk materials, we came across honeybee silk from Apis mellifera. Although it may not have the tensile strength of spider silk, it is extremely flexible and has potential as a high performance material. It also has the advantage of being a non-repetitive sequence, which makes it much easier to work with genetically. We will submit the honeybee silk coding region as a novel biobrick to add to the registry's growing collection of protein material parts. Furthermore, we plan on functionalizing the honeybee silk by first fusing it with GFP as a proof of principle, and later fusing it to affinity domains to create a modular fiber.

The third part of our project involves processing the recombinant silk proteins in order to create functional silk threads and documenting their characteristics. We are trying to do so with low-budget and easy-to-use protocols, so that future iGEM teams who pursue projects related to silk will be able to do so easily.

Before you start:

Please read the following pages:

• Requirements page
• Wiki Requirements page

Styling your wiki

You may style this page as you like or you can simply leave the style as it is. You can easily keep the styling and edit the content of these default wiki pages with your project information and completely fulfill the requirement to document your project.

While you may not win Best Wiki with this styling, your team is still eligible for all other awards. This default wiki meets the requirements, it improves navigability and ease of use for visitors, and you should not feel it is necessary to style beyond what has been provided.

Editing your wiki

On this page you can document your project, introduce your team members, document your progress and share your iGEM experience with the rest of the world!

Click here to edit this page!

See tips on how to edit your wiki on the Template Documentation page.

Templates

This year we have created templates for teams to use freely. More information on how to use and edit the templates can be found on the Template Documentation page.

Tips

This wiki will be your team’s first interaction with the rest of the world, so here are a few tips to help you get started:

• State your accomplishments! Tell people what you have achieved from the start.
• Be clear about what you are doing and how you plan to do this.
• You have a global audience! Consider the different backgrounds that your users come from.
• Make sure information is easy to find; nothing should be more than 3 clicks away.
• Avoid using very small fonts and low contrast colors; information should be easy to read.
• Start documenting your project as early as possible; don’t leave anything to the last minute before the Wiki Freeze. For a complete list of deadlines visit the iGEM 2015 calendar
• Have lots of fun!

Inspiration

You can also view other team wikis for inspiration! Here are some examples:

• 2014 SDU Denmark
• 2014 Aalto-Helsinki
• 2014 LMU-Munich
• 2014 Michigan
• 2014 ITESM-Guadalajara
• 2014 SCU-China

Uploading pictures and files

You can upload your pictures and files to the iGEM 2015 server. Remember to keep all your pictures and files within your team's namespace or at least include your team's name in the file name.
When you upload, set the "Destination Filename" to Team:YourOfficialTeamName/NameOfFile.jpg. (If you don't do this, someone else might upload a different file with the same "Destination Filename", and your file would be erased!)

CLICK HERE TO UPLOAD FILES