Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Bettencourt/Sustainability/Continuity"
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For the product to be usable, several specifications have to be taken into account: | For the product to be usable, several specifications have to be taken into account: | ||
<ul> | <ul> | ||
− | <li><b>It must be easily extendable:</b> Our micro-organism should be a chassis allowing for quick addition of standard cassettes</li> | + | <li><b>It must be easily extendable:</b><br/>Our micro-organism should be a chassis allowing for quick addition of standard cassettes</li> |
− | <li><b>It must be modular:</b> The different metabolic pathways should be independant so they can be put together without going through tedious troubleshooting,</li> | + | <li><b>It must be modular:</b><br/> The different metabolic pathways should be independant so they can be put together without going through tedious troubleshooting,</li> |
− | <li><b>It must survive in the real world:</b> To make our micro-organism more resistant to contamination, we need to design it so our modifications come with a minimal fitness cost.</li> | + | <li><b>It must survive in the real world:</b><br/> To make our micro-organism more resistant to contamination, we need to design it so our modifications come with a minimal fitness cost.</li> |
− | <li><b>It must be all-in-one:</b> For people with limited equipment, having only one strain that does everything is a huge advantage, because only one bioreactor and one production line is needed. This makes it accessible to community labs or NGOs that would want to start producing their own version of our product.</li> | + | <li><b>It must be all-in-one:</b><br/> For people with limited equipment, having only one strain that does everything is a huge advantage, because only one bioreactor and one production line is needed. This makes it accessible to community labs or NGOs that would want to start producing their own version of our product.</li> |
</ul> | </ul> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
<div style="clear:both"></div> | <div style="clear:both"></div> | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
<h1 id="specification">Specification</h1> | <h1 id="specification">Specification</h1> | ||
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<h1 class="date two" id="our-design">Our design</h1> | <h1 class="date two" id="our-design">Our design</h1> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <!-- Fitness burden --> | ||
<h2 id="from-the-lab-to-the-world">From the lab to the world</h2> | <h2 id="from-the-lab-to-the-world">From the lab to the world</h2> | ||
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<div class="column-right"> | <div class="column-right"> | ||
− | <p>It seems impossible to make a strain that fullfills its nutrient-producing functions while growing as fast as the wild type, so we found a workaround: the cells that people use are not the cells that people grow. We embedded a differentiation system into our organism, so the vitamin-producing pathways are only expressed after a recombination event. | + | <p>It seems impossible to make a strain that fullfills its nutrient-producing functions while growing as fast as the wild type, so we found a workaround: the cells that people use are not the cells that people grow.<br/> |
− | <p> | + | |
− | <p> | + | We embedded a differentiation system into our organism, so the vitamin-producing pathways are only expressed after a recombination event. First, the cells that are grown are almost identical to the wild-type cells. Before distribution, the differentiation is induced and the cells start to produce vitamins in high quantity. The battle against contaminants is now a fair fight.</p> |
+ | |||
+ | <p>We protected our product against foreign organisms, but one threat remains: our organism's own mutants. If a mutation occurs in the active site of an enzyme, or in the promoter of an operon, the functionality of the organism might be impaired. How can we prevent our organism from mutating?</p> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <p>Fortunately, our friends at the Vanderbilt University iGEM team worked precisely on that problem this summer. We worked hand in hand with them to see what a real-life application of their invention would mean practically. They invented an algorithm to scan the sequences looking for regions that are likely to mutate, and proposed alternative versions of our sequences.<br/> | ||
+ | As they worked on this project while we were working on ours, we obviously could not use their optimized sequences for our constructs. However, we relied on gene synthesis for a lot of parts, so it would not have been a problem to use the optimized sequences instead. Their algorithm is therefore a valuable tool for any synthetic biologist willing to create durable products, and we applaud their work. | ||
+ | </p> | ||
<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" title="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" alt="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" /> | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" title="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" alt="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/PB_growth.png" /> | ||
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<div style="clear:both"></div> | <div style="clear:both"></div> | ||
− | <p>How | + | <!-- Extendability --> |
+ | |||
+ | <div class="column-left"> | ||
+ | <p>Our differentiation system is inspired by the Brainbow system, initially developed for tracking the axons of neurons in mammalian's brain. We modified it so it becomes extendable.</p> | ||
+ | <p>This system is randomized on a single-cell level, so each cell produce one, and only one, vitamin pathway. Having one cell expressing only one pathway should theoretically preclude unexpected interactions between different pathways, thus making an extendable framework where every synthesis function is decoupled.</p> | ||
+ | </div> | ||
+ | <div class="column-right"> | ||
+ | <div class="figure"> | ||
+ | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/98/PB_framework_construction.png" title="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/98/PB_framework_construction.png" alt="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/98/PB_framework_construction.png" /> | ||
+ | <p class="caption">https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/98/PB_framework_construction.png</p> | ||
+ | </div> | ||
+ | </div> | ||
+ | <div style="clear:both"></div> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <center><p>How is it possible?</p></center> | ||
<h2 id="the-chassis">The chassis</h2> | <h2 id="the-chassis">The chassis</h2> | ||
+ | |||
+ | Before addition of any metabolic pathways, this is what our empty chassis would look like. The following cassette is integrated in the chromosome. | ||
<div class="figure"> | <div class="figure"> | ||
− | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/14/PB_chassis.png" | + | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/14/PB_chassis.png" style="width:100%" /> |
− | + | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
− | + | All proteins' coding regions are followed by a terminator. | |
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
+ | <p><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/e/ee/PB_1.png"/> <strong>Constitutive promoter:</strong> Thanks to this promoter, a RNA transcript of the cassette will be produced until the first terminator is reached.</p> | ||
+ | <p><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/c/c8/PB_2.png"/> <strong>The Lox Array:</strong> | ||
+ | The original LoxP site comes from the phage P1. | ||
+ | When an enzyme called the <em>CRE recombinase</em> is expressed, all the DNA between two Lox sites is deleted. Each lox site is made of one <em>overlap region</em> (in bold) surrounded by two complementary <em>flanking regions</em>. The middle of the sequence can be modified, but two LoxP sites will recombine together only if the sequence is exactly identical for both (Richier 2015). The flanking regions cannot be mutated and determine the specificity for one recombination enzyme.</p> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <p>Here are the four orthogonal Lox sites we used: | ||
+ | <ul> | ||
+ | <li><b>LoxP:</b> ATAACTTCGTATA<strong>ATGTATGC</strong>TATACGAAGTTAT</li> | ||
+ | <li><b>Lox2272:</b> ATAACTTCGTATA<strong>AAGTATCC</strong>TATACGAAGTTAT</li> | ||
+ | <li><b>LoxN:</b> ATAACTTCGTATA<strong>AGGTATAC</strong>TATACGAAGTTAT</li> | ||
+ | <li><b>Lox5171:</b> ATAACTTCGTATA<strong>ATGTGTAC</strong>TATACGAAGTTAT</li> | ||
+ | </ul> | ||
+ | </p> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <p><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/e/e6/PB_3.png"/> <strong>The ID gene: </strong>This gene is entirely optional but can be used as a barcode to identify the strain. This allows for quality control of what is inoculated when a new production culture is started.</p> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <p><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/8d/PB_4.png"/> <strong>The landing pad: </strong> | ||
+ | This part allows for easy integration of new gene cassettes into the system. | ||
+ | |||
+ | <p><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/9d/PB_5.png"/> <strong>CRE-recombinase: </strong>The CRE recombinase should be integrated in the chromosome as well, so we do not have to use an antibiotic for maintaining the plasmid. It has to be under the control of an inducible promoter. The expression of CRE will trigger the differentiation.</p> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <!-- LANDING PAD --> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <h2 id="landing-pads">The Landing Pad</h2> | ||
+ | <div class="column-left"> | ||
+ | <p>Starting from this chassis, up to four metabolic pathways can be added by using the attB sequence as a landing pad. Like the Lox sites, this sequence comes from a bacteriophage: the PhiC31 phage who uses it to integrate itself in the genome of the host. To insert a new sequence in it, all you need to do is build a plasmid with the matching "attP" site and express the PhiC31 integrase. | ||
+ | <ul> | ||
+ | <li>attB: GTGCGGGTGCCAGGGCGTGCCC<strong>TT</strong>GGGCTCCCCGGGCGCGTACTCCA</li> | ||
+ | <li>attP: AGTGCCCCAACTGGGGTAACCT<strong>TT</strong>GAGTTCTCTCAGTTGGGGGCGT</li> | ||
+ | </ul> | ||
+ | When inserting something in the landing pad, a new landing pad should be added for subsequent integration. This landing pad should be orthogonal to the first one to avoid multiple successive integrations. The same integrase can be used, the central <strong>TT</strong> just has to be replaced by <strong>CC</strong> to make the two sites orthogonal.</p> | ||
+ | quick forking in a lot of parallel projects</p> | ||
+ | </div> | ||
+ | <div class="column-right"> | ||
+ | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/7/75/PB_landingpad.png"/> | ||
+ | <span class="legend">For clarity, the selection method has not been depicted. Using CRISPR-based system for selection could be a good idea as it avoids the problem of antibiotic resistance removal.</span> | ||
+ | </div> | ||
+ | <div style="clear:both"></div> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <!--DIVISION OF LABOUR --> | ||
+ | |||
+ | <h2 id="division-of-labour">Division of labour</h2> | ||
<div class="figure"> | <div class="figure"> | ||
− | <img src | + | <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/6/65/PB_brainbow.png"/> |
<p class="caption">https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/6/65/PB_brainbow.png</p> | <p class="caption">https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/6/65/PB_brainbow.png</p> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
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<p>leakiness</p> | <p>leakiness</p> | ||
<p>decoupling the different metabolic pathways <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" title="fig:https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" alt="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" /></p> | <p>decoupling the different metabolic pathways <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" title="fig:https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" alt="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/16/PB_prototype.png" /></p> | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
− | + | ||
<h1 class="date three" id="results">Results</> | <h1 class="date three" id="results">Results</> | ||
<h2 id="construction-of-the-system">Construction of the system</h2> | <h2 id="construction-of-the-system">Construction of the system</h2> | ||
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This project was designed and accomplished by Antoine Vigouroux in consultation with Jason Bland and Ihab Boulas. | This project was designed and accomplished by Antoine Vigouroux in consultation with Jason Bland and Ihab Boulas. | ||
− | Most of the strains (DH5alpha, Top10, NEB turbo, Pir116) were kindly provided by Inserm U1001. Plasmids pFHC2938 and pMEV250 were provided by Didier Mazel's lab at Institut Pasteur. Plasmids pL1F2 and pR6K-shortened were provided by Inserm U1001. The | + | Most of the strains (DH5alpha, Top10, NEB turbo, Pir116) were kindly provided by Inserm U1001. Plasmids pFHC2938 and pMEV250 were provided by Jason Bland and Aleksandra Nivia at Didier Mazel's lab at Institut Pasteur. Plasmids pL1F2 and pR6K-shortened were provided by Antoine Decrulle and Ihab Boulas at Inserm U1001. The pIT5-KH vector was provided by Lun Cui at David Bikard's lab at Institut Pasteur. |
Special thanks to all the people who gave me an hand during this project, and all the Paris Bettencourt team for making it so much fun. | Special thanks to all the people who gave me an hand during this project, and all the Paris Bettencourt team for making it so much fun. | ||
</html> | </html> | ||
{{Paris_Bettencourt/footer}} | {{Paris_Bettencourt/footer}} |
Revision as of 13:36, 18 September 2015