Team:SJTU-BioX-Shanghai/Basic Part

Basic Parts

Introduction

This year, our team will choose to present STAR 3, another modified STAR (Small Transcriptional-Activating RNA) for the award of the basic part (BBa_K2285020). Our project was based on iGEM16_Imperial STAR system (to distinguish it from our work, we called it STAR 1 system), and we decided to build another STAR system (we called it STAR 3 system) to achieve multiple responds to different conditions. To put it simply, two STAR systems together can control two genetic circuits. For more information about advantages of STAR and how it works, you can be refer to here .

Figure 1. The STAR construct. In the absence of antisense, sense target RNA will form a stem-loop structure, functioning as a terminator and stop the following transcription. When antisense RNA, a mRNA fragment which is the antisense of part of the target RNA, is transcribed, the terminator structure will be disrupted and switch on the inhibited transcription.

For convenience, we want to introduce some terms for later description:

In the original project of Imperial, the stem-loop structure, which could be seen as a terminator, on the upstream of functional genes is called STAR-Target and we would just name it Target. The DNA sequence that transcribes STAR we rename it Antisense. When we say Target 1 and Antisense 1, they refer to the terminator structure and its complementary sequence in Imperial’s project. When we say Target 3 and Antisense 3, they refer to the novel terminator structure and its complementary sequence we designed this year. Target 1 and Antisense 1 together constitute STAR 1 system and Target 3 and Antisense 3 constitute STAR 3 system.

Please visit our Design page to find more information about how we designed the STAR 3 system.

Alternatively check out Target 3 BBa_K2285020 webpage for characterization of the STARs (Both STAR 1 and STAR 3) system.

Basic Parts we submitted

Part Number	Type	Description	Length (bp)
BBa_K2285010	RNA	Antisense3+t500	104
BBa_K2285020	Regulatory	J23119+Target3	128

Reference

Chappell J, Takahashi MK, Lucks JB. 2015. Creating small transcription activating RNAs. Nat Chem Biol 11:214–220.
Meyer, S., Chappell, J., Sankar, S., Chew, R., and Lucks, J. B. (2016) Improving fold activation of small transcription activating RNAs (STARs) with rational RNA engineering strategies Biotechnol. Bioeng. 113, 216.