Team:Washington/Design
Wetlab Design
The goal of the project is to use inducible promoters to change the color output of the violacein pathway.
To turn off VioC and VioD, we originally planned to use a one-plasmid system with inducible promoters in front of them. However, this proved to be problematic to complete, as explained below. We eventually decided to use a CRISPR/dCas9/sgRNA system. The system was designed to have CRISPR/dCas9, the violacein pathway, and sgRNA on separate plasmids. We chose to use this 3-plasmid system for the following reasons:
- The violacein plasmid is very large and difficult to assemble after being disassembled. Usually, the plasmid would be linearized to add inducible promoters before certain genes, and then recircularized. We also considered cloning each gene separately to be inserted into separate plasmids. However, this also proved difficult due to the absence of unique restriction enzyme sites flanking any of the genes in the pathway.Additionally, because each gene used the same promoter and terminator, the products of PCR amplification would form secondary structures which would be impossible to re-linearize. This means that we could not clone out the first three genes in the pathway, ABE, in one go.
- With these challenges in mind, we wanted an easy system that could be used to test other promoters. It would be difficult to linearize and re-circularize the plasmid every time we wanted to change the promoters. It is much easier to work with a small, manageable sgRNA plasmid.
- We wanted to integrate the system into the yeast genome. If we integrated everything into the genome, it would be impossible to change promoters. In our design, the violacein pathway and dCas9 gene are both integrated into the yeast genome, while the sgRNAs are on a plasmid.
When all three plasmids are transformed into yeast, the violacein pathway and CRISPR/dCas9 will be constitutively expressed on their own plasmids. In the third plasmid with the sgRNAs targeting VioC and VioD, the genes are only expressed under certain conditions based on the presence or absence of their respective inducer in the culture. Our planned inducible yeast promoters were CUP1 and ZAP1. For CUP1, as the concentration of copper in the solution increases, the presence of the copper molecule will drive the promoter forward, causing the gene attached to be transcribed. ZAP1 on the other hand works in an opposite direction. At low zinc conditions, ZAP1 promoter is active; at high concentrations, the promoter is repressed. CUP1 drives VioC while ZAP1 drives VioD. When copper sulfate solution is added to the system, the VioC enzyme will be produced. ZAP1’s function is inversely related to the level of zinc in solution, which means that as the concentration of zinc increases, VioD will be produced less.
When sgRNAs for VioC and VioD are produced, they will form a complex with CRISPR/dCas9. The complexes will bind to VioC and VioD genes and prevent transcription of these genes.
Drylab Design
Chromastat Design
In order to build our chromastat, we followed two design objectives:
- Low-cost
- Versatile
We started with a sketch of a simple turbidostat implementation with fluid controls, based on a modified version of the turbidostat in the Klavins lab at the University of Washington. We built this simple system to test the basic components and possible points of difficulty with a full system.
We also took inspiration from Dr. Dunham in the Department of Genome Sciences, working on directed evolution in yeast with chemostats.
In our earliest design iteration, we were most worried about the possibility of using a RGB sensor to detect color changes. We used a PiCamera to test out this idea.
We realized quickly that the color sensor would be a highly sensitive piece of hardware, and that much more regulation of light and position would be required. We also found out that the current design for a syringe pump is too inaccurate, and thus the syringe pump went through numerous iterations, as described below.
For our second iteration of our device, we decided to follow the strict parts list on the turbidostat construction list for the Klavins lab, and identified parts that we could reduce costs. We also visited the Klavins lab to discuss difficulties and limitations they face with their current turbidostat.
Syringe Pump
The syringe pump is made out of 3D printed pieces of PLA plastic that are attached to a threaded rod, linear slides, and a stepper motor similar to those found on 3D printers. It is controlled by a program we created using the Raspberry Pi. It was a vital component for the Chromastat, because we needed these to input inducers into the tube. Before any long term goals were set for the syringe pump, testing needed to be done to see how well it currently performed.
From testing, we found that the pump had a constant overshoot of 0.1 mL. It was determined that the origin of the source of error was the screw we used to move the platform that depressed the syringe. We decided to switch over from a regular ¼” threaded rod to a 8mm lead screw, thereby reducing the amount of endpoint variability.
Next, we found that there were lots of issues pertaining to the linear guide rails. We remodeled the entire system in order to fit linear slide bearings on. This made the entire movement much smoother.
We decided to make the syringe pump modular, so we could introduce many different size syringes to the system. Thinner and longer syringes can be extremely accurate compared to the 3 mL syringe pumps we currently use.
Low-cost commercial syringe pumps lack programmability, accuracy, and the ability to refill. We wanted our pump to have all of these features. Programmability is achieved by using the Pi to control the pump. Because the control software is written in Java, the overall behavior of the pump can be easily customized to any situation by anyone with intermediate Java experience.
Accuracy was achieved by the above techniques of employing linear slide bearings and an 8mm lead screw to control the linear actuation of the syringe.
For automatic refilling, we employ a set of double check valves, graciously donated by Nordson Medical. These valves allows us to expel fluid when depressing the syringe and refill the syringe by drawing it back.
