The Problem & Solution
Despite that we were inspired by the melting out of plasticizer from water, we soon found that the amount difference of the melting plasticizer under 25 degrees Celsius and 35 degrees Celsius (or a bit higher) is not considerable. Thus, we are going to apply our product mainly on foods, cosmetics and medicines. The target temperature we’ve set is 37 degrees Celsius, the temperature that bacteria grows the most.
However, one never arranges enough to beat changes. After receiving the answers for the questionnaires that we have designed, doing more researches on the Internet, and asking many experts in the food transportation field, we soon realize that our products are not useful in food transportation. Thus, we focus on nutrition supplements, cosmetics, and medicines eventually.
Overview
We transplant a modified gene into e-coli, and after drying them up, we put these special e-coli into a specialized sticker made by ourselves, and manufactured a device that can do long-term detection. The sticker monitors the temperature and UV light in the whole transportation process, and will change the color on its outlook. By simply take a glance on it, the customers can directly confirm the condition of the merchandise.(see Design & Device)
Improvement of Previous BioBrick
This year, we have designed fusion proteins of spider toxin in conjunction with snowdrop lectin by the three-alanine linker. Through the reference searching, we found that the previous research all used the three-alanine linker. In the experiment, we hypothesized that an elongated linker would enhance the function of the fusion protein for the original linker is too short for the proper folding of the two domains. So we went to the linker library in iGEM part registry website to search for a longer linker. At first, we planned to use the Flexible Peptide GS Linker(BBa_K416001) from 2010 NYU iGEM team. However, we found no result in the previous history using this linker. Therefore, we modified the sequence and added three more amino acids into the linker in case it was still too short for proper protein folding. In the experiment(See the Link), the fusion protein with the elongated GS linker did show the enhanced repellent effect. Observed from the phenomenon, we did prove the enhanced function of the fusion proteins, so we speculate that the fusion protein has a better secondary structure than the original ones. As a result, we have submitted a basic part for the improved elongated GS linker.(See the Link)
