Description

Here is a clear and concise introduction of our project. It only provides the most essential information and will be re-edit later.

• A brief description of our project.

We designed a new kind of genetically engineered E.coli which has the function of light-induced suicide or self-flocculation. To achieve this goal, we used two light ( red and blue ) controlled switches, a cell-lysis gene ( named lys ) and a self-flocculation gene ( named bcsB ). We planed to use the light controlled switches to regulate the expression o the lys or back gene. When red or blue light is available, E.coli cells will conduct suicide or self-flocculate. If time permits, wee’ll try to put the two switches and the two functional genes in the same E.coli cell to test if it is able to conduct different functions in response to different colors of light.

• Why do we chose to work on this genetically engineered E.coli at first?

Separation of metabolites from cells and contamination by bacteriophage are two big challenges in the fermentation industry. Separation of metabolites needs to collect cells with centrifugation or take a long time to wait for self-precipitation. Contamination by bacteriophage is often resulted from incomplete sterilization and/or the metabolites producing bacteria escaping to the nearby environment. To address the two questions, we students came out of an idea that if we can increase the efficiency of self-precipitation by introducing a self-flocculation gene and increase the sterilization effect by inducing suicide with a cell lysis gene. We think that introducing the light-induced switch systems will largely facilitate the control of the expression of the suicide and self-flocculation genes and make it more applicable to the fermentation industry.

• References and sources we used in our research.

①Jeffrey J. Tabor,Anselm Levskaya,and Christopher A. Voigt. Multichromatic control of gene expression in Escherichia coli.J Mol Biol. 2011 January 14; 405(2): 315–324.

②Wu H, Wang Y, Wang Y, Cao X, Wu Y, Meng Z, Su Q, Wang Z, Yang S, Xu W, Liu S, Cheng P, Wu J, Khan MR, He L, Ma G.Quantitatively relating gene expression to light intensity via the serial connection of blue light sensor and CRISPRi.ACS Synth Biol. 2014 Dec 19;3(12):979-82. doi: 10.1021/sb500059x.

③Yoshihiro Ojima, Minh Hong Nguyen, Reiki Yajima, and Masahito Taya.Flocculation of Escherichia coli Cells in Association with Enhanced Production of Outer Membrane Vesicles. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2015 Sep 1;81(17):5900-6. doi: 10.1128/AEM.01011-15. Epub 2015 Jun 19.

④Laura Grande, Valeria Michelacci, Rosangela Tozzoli, Paola Ranieri, Antonella Maugliani, Alfredo Caprioli, and Stefano Morabito. Whole genome sequence comparison of vtx2-converting phages from Enteroaggregative Haemorrhagic Escherichia coli strains. BMC Genomics. 2014; 15(1): 574.Published online 2014 Jul 8. doi:  10.1186/1471-2164-15-574.

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