Team:UIUC Illinois/Description

• HOME
• TEAM
• PROJECT
  • Description
  • Experiments & Protocols
  • Results
• PARTS
  • Team Parts
  • Composite Parts
  • Part Collection
• NOTEBOOK
• ATTRIBUTIONS
• COLLABORATIONS
• HUMAN PRACTICES
• SAFETY

Project Description

Tell us about your project, describe what moves you and why this is something important for your team.

Preliminary Project Description

Current biosensors are limited in the sense that they produce digital outputs (either 0 or 1 output) in the presence of an inducer. In order to create a more useful biosensor, analog devices with wider ranges of outputs are necessary. In contrast to digital sensors, an analog device can measure an inducer across a spectrum; for example, an analog device could be used to pinpoint the concentration of iron in groundwater, whereas digital devices could only register whether the concentration exceeded a pre-defined threshold amount.
Our device, the bacterial tape recorder, will generate such analog outputs by converting chemical inputs into DNA based memory. Using the SCRIBE (Synthetic Cellular Recorders Integrating Biological Events) system developed by Timothy Lu’s lab at MIT, we aim to standardize a device that can characterize the intensity of and duration of events and store them for later retrieval. The SCRIBE system works by integrating plasmid DNA, later becoming specifically ssDNA into genomic DNA upon stimulation. By population analysis of cells that express the analog marker, we will use this system to monitor hazardous environmental factors such as heavy metals, which are known to be detrimental to groundwater in urban areas and developing countries.
We aim to introduce a degree of modularity that will allow future synthetic biologists to choose what inputs are the stimulus for analog recording.

What should this page contain?

• A clear and concise description of your project.
• A detailed explanation of why your team chose to work on this particular project.
• References and sources to document your research.
• Use illustrations and other visual resources to explain your project.

Advice on writing your Project Description

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.

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.

References

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.

Inspiration

See how other teams have described and presented their projects:

• Imperial
• UC Davis
• SYSU Software