Team:UCopenhagen/Project
Introduction
Our team believes that establishing a stable platform for scientists to create naïve orthogonal living compartments, would allow for an unpredictable advancement in the field of synthetic biology. Our project will not attempt to create an endosymbiont, but instead investigate the mechanisms in free-living cells in a bottom-up approach to endosymbiosis.
Therefore, we decided to work on three distinct, but intertwined, projects pertaining to endosymbiosis, namely Interdependence, Number Control, and Protein import. We believe that by combining these three projects, a key step towards the understanding of endosymbiosis and its employment in synthetic biology will be obtained.
Sub-projects:
Synthetic endosymbiosis will have numerous applications if developed to be the orthogonal system we envision. We have chosen to take a bottom-up approach to it, through the investigation of the following three essential mechanisms.
Interdependence between host and endosymbiont is necessary in order for the endosymbiotic relationship to be stable and maintained throughout evolution or, more relevant for synthetic biology, through generations. The relationship should be beneficial and crucial for the host and the endosymbiont alike. Interdependency would thus decrease possible safety concerns: without the dependency relationship, the endosymbiotic relationship will not spread and be maintained in a wild population.
Number control addresses our concern that the endosymbiont will thrive too well in the host, and replicate uncontrollably - thus overwhelming the host system - or be lost in host replications. Thus we strive for a way to maintain a stable number of endosymbionts in the system. A control system that repress endosymbiont reproduction in high concentration/numbers, and allow replication when the concentration is decreased, would address this concern.
Protein import is a common trait observed in naturally occurring endosymbiotic relationships, such as mitochondria and chloroplasts. In these cases a down regulation of protein expression in the symbiont is observed, and the protein expression is instead moved to the cell. Most proteins found in mitochondria and chloroplasts are transcribed in the nucleus, translated in the cytoplasm and subsequently transported across the cell membranes into the endosymbionts. This mechanism would tighten the relationship between host and symbiont, and would allow endosymbiotic manipulation of precursors produced in the host.
