Team:Duke/Description

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Project Description

Overview

We wanted to look at applications of a phenomenon we discovered last year in dCas9 repression that when a additional binding sites are added, the repressive power of dCas9 decreases. We wanted to see what happens if we switched directions and attempted to read out the decoy itself. We plan on identifying how this effect changes with respect to plasmid copy number differences between the two landing sites. Early editions will likely use fluorescent proteins for measuring transcription levels, with hopes of making a dCas9 "IF" gate.

But what about applications of an IF gate? One of the first rounds of ideas as a proof of concept of the system was to create an "If antibiotic is present, then trigger cell death." This is our hope for the project, but in it we found a second branch of our project: how to find a better death gene. The only gene candidate in the 2015 kit was not even a true cell death gene but a lysis gene. From there we made another of the BioBrick genes ourselves for testing but wanted to look at better alternatives for these. We are looking at a more deadly lysis gene as well as variants of the BioBrick antimicrobial peptide, Protegrin, in hopes of biobricking a gene without haemolytic effects.

Cell Death Screening

We created adorable CELL DEATH GENES to terrify our ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT BACTERIA.

Thermocycler

Because we thought ANTIBIOTICS were too 1955.

Antibiotic Detection

The MRSA were getting too big for their britches.

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Inspiration

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• Imperial
• UC Davis
• SYSU Software