Difference between revisions of "Team:WashU StLouis/Description"

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<h2> Project Description </h2>
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        <a class="navbar-brand page-scroll" href="#page-top">Nitrogenius</a>
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<p>Tell us about your project, describe what moves you and why this is something important for your team.</p>
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            <a class="page-scroll" href="#description">Description</a>
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            <a href="mailto:ayekedavidr@wustl.edu?subject=Bug">Report Bugs</a>
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<h5>What should this page contain?</h5>
 
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<li> A clear and concise description of your project.</li>
 
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<li>A detailed explanation of why your team chose to work on this particular project.</li>
 
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<li>References and sources to document your research.</li>
 
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          <h4 class="text-muted section-heading">IGEM 2015 Project Description.</h4>
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            The 2014 WashU iGEM team successfully transferred the nif cluster from Cyanothece 51142 to E. coli. However, the nitrogenase activity they measured was minimal. Therefore, the WashU/Penn State 2015 team dedicated itself to increasing the nitrogenase activity of last year’s E. coli strain by knocking down and overexpressing certain genes on the nif-containing plasmid. Additionally, we are using genome-scale metabolic modeling to guide potential genetic interventions and facilitate nitrogen fixation in E. coli. We are performing a systematic analysis of metabolites and genes in our model to optimize nitrogenase activity.
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            A few weeks into our work, a member of our lab had trouble repeating the 2014 results and we began to consider the notion that E. coli may be incompatible with components of the plasmid—whose parts come directly from Cyanothece 51142—at the transcriptional, translational, or post-translational levels. After an evaluation of our remaining time and resources, we decided to construct a more minimal nif cluster for E. coli in order to reduce the effects of any native regulation present in the original plasmid we used. We plan to continue our analysis of the nif cluster using overexpression, knockdown, and metabolic engineering.
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            Our team is part of a larger project that is seeking to confer nitrogen fixation capabilities to a non-diazotrophic cyanobacterium, Synechocystis pp. 6803. Synechocystis is evolutionarily related by the endosymbiotic theory to plant chloroplasts, so a nitrogen-fixing Synechocystis could be used as a model to engineer plants that fix their own nitrogen. We hope that the results of this year’s iGEM team will be useful to the researchers working on The Nitrogen Project since E. coli is a well-characterized, fast-growing model organism.
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<h4>Advice on writing your Project Description</h4>
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We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be consist, accurate and unambiguous in your achievements.
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Judges like to read your wiki and know exactly what you have achieved. This is how you should think about these sections; from the point of view of the judge evaluating you at the end of the year.
 
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<h4>References</h4>
 
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<p>iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you though about your project and what works inspired you.</p>
 
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<h4>Inspiration</h4>
 
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<p>See how other teams have described and presented their projects: </p>
 
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<li><a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:Imperial/Project"> Imperial</a></li>
 
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<li><a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:UC_Davis/Project_Overview"> UC Davis</a></li>
 
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<li><a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:SYSU-Software/Overview">SYSU Software</a></li>
 
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Latest revision as of 00:36, 18 September 2015

Washington University - Penn State iGEM

Welcome To Our Website!
WashU and Penn State   iGEM 2015
Project Description Let's Talk Apply for the 2016 iGEM Team!

IGEM 2015 Project Description.

The 2014 WashU iGEM team successfully transferred the nif cluster from Cyanothece 51142 to E. coli. However, the nitrogenase activity they measured was minimal. Therefore, the WashU/Penn State 2015 team dedicated itself to increasing the nitrogenase activity of last year’s E. coli strain by knocking down and overexpressing certain genes on the nif-containing plasmid. Additionally, we are using genome-scale metabolic modeling to guide potential genetic interventions and facilitate nitrogen fixation in E. coli. We are performing a systematic analysis of metabolites and genes in our model to optimize nitrogenase activity.

A few weeks into our work, a member of our lab had trouble repeating the 2014 results and we began to consider the notion that E. coli may be incompatible with components of the plasmid—whose parts come directly from Cyanothece 51142—at the transcriptional, translational, or post-translational levels. After an evaluation of our remaining time and resources, we decided to construct a more minimal nif cluster for E. coli in order to reduce the effects of any native regulation present in the original plasmid we used. We plan to continue our analysis of the nif cluster using overexpression, knockdown, and metabolic engineering.

Our team is part of a larger project that is seeking to confer nitrogen fixation capabilities to a non-diazotrophic cyanobacterium, Synechocystis pp. 6803. Synechocystis is evolutionarily related by the endosymbiotic theory to plant chloroplasts, so a nitrogen-fixing Synechocystis could be used as a model to engineer plants that fix their own nitrogen. We hope that the results of this year’s iGEM team will be useful to the researchers working on The Nitrogen Project since E. coli is a well-characterized, fast-growing model organism.