Team:NYMU-Taipei/Notebook
NrtA protein sticks to the periplasmic membrane by a flexible linker and it can capture nitrite or nitrate in the periplasm. Then delivery to the transmembrane complexed that made by NrtB. In our project, we try to transform NrtA gene from cyanobacteria Synechosistis PCC 6803 to E.coli. Engineering E.coli will be capable of clutching nitrite or nitrate in the environment. They will not intake nitrate or nitrite since the gas accumulation may be lethal to cells. But the amount of cells that contain nitrite will decrease. Therefore, the microalgae will undergo nitrogen Starvation and produce oil more efficient.
After building up the nitrogen starvation and extract the oil from microalgae, we need to kill E.coli to prevent contamination. So we plan to use endolysin and holin for cell lysis, which is similar to the mechanism used by team Pecking (2014iGEM Beijing). Holin can trigger the formation of holes on cell membrane. When the holin successfully triggers holes on cell membrane, endolysin can pass the membrane through holes and decompose peptidoglycan. E.coli is lysed after the cell membrane and cell wall are destroyed. To control the suicide timing, we design an inducible promoter for holin, so that we can induce E.coli suicide at the exactly time we want.
