Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/Application
Coliclock application
Generally speaking, Coliclock system controls the lifetime of GMOs in the environment. But further than that, our team was interested in some more specific applications. We chose to analyze previous and this year's iGEM projects and tried to theoretically incorporate our system in their genetically engineered bacteria.
Bee. coli
First project that we were interested in, was 2013 Taipei team’s Bee. coli project. This team suggested light induced system to prevent the spreading of bacteria. According to their data and experiment, this system works in vitro in a lab environment. If we think about this kind of bacteria live in bees, it’s easy to imagine that bacteria can spread in the dark and get into other species.
If we added our Coliclock system into Bee. coli, bacteria would produce proteins against Nosema ceranae, parazite, which affects bees and causes them to get sick. In theory, Bee. coli project would ne responsible for the protein system, whilst our construct, Coliclock would be responsible for the time of the performed function. Cells divide for some time and then die. Regulation of light is not essential here and bacteria will back out on its own.