Week 1: The beginning
We formed as an iGEM group in 2014, when we started to have recurrent meeting for creating new ideas of possible projects of synthetic biology, including some projects in the Centre of Bioengineering and Biotechnology. Our first meeting was several brainstorming considering two main objectives: to generate new ideas of projects and assess the feasibility in terms of experimental design.
The generated ideas was related to solve problem of routine laboratory methodologies, sustentabilities issues, and other problems of molecular biology. After several brainstorming activities we gather several of project that needed to be processed and assessed its feasibility. One of the meetings of the recently formed iGEM group, in that time called just “OpenBio”, we met the group Fab-LAB and they were interested in a new form of producing a raw material used for 3D printing, Polylactic Acid (PLA). Until that we saw different ways of how to produce polymers of different kind in a biological system, comprehending the metabolic pathways known and searching for new genetic sources. Then, the project of PLA production in a biological system using synthetic biology tools is formed.
Week 2: Preparation of the design and complementary activities
After the formation of the PLA project was elected by unanimity, we started to work the design of the project and the molecular biology needed to achieve a biological system controlled by a regulatory network that accomplished the principles of synthetic biology. Then, the first ideas of a regulatory network has been created using the microorganism E. coli as a host. PLA is actually produced by chemical synthesis using an old system called O’Ring polymerization, so then a biological system should have comparable yields and low cost of purification process. Then the first conception was to enable a biological system that could handle a large production of recombinant proteins derived of a synthetic pathway, and that could be achieved using a controlled system based in the kinetic growth of the microorganism. Thus, a quorum sensing based expression system could handle the metabolic burden involved in a new pathway, and the production of PLA could be sustainable in time. The second concept is to improve the extraction processes of PLA after fermentations. Lately, biological production of PLA consider harvesting cell pellet and then destroy cell membrane to extract intracellular PLA. The significant costs associated to this process could be improved implementing a PLA export system that could be similar to a PHA phasins export systems reported. So the goal of the project y to design all of these genetic circuits properly regulated by the cell growth and the other physiological conditions.