<h3>Designing a Customizable Synthetic Cell Compartment Toolbox</h3>
+
<h2>Designing a Customizable Synthetic Cell Compartment Toolbox</h2>
−
<p>
+
<p>Have you ever looked at an airplane and thought about how intricately each part has to be designed to fit into the overall machine?
−
Synthetic organisms provide a wide range of applications with the potential to tackle the biggest challenges humanity faces. Their creation is therefore one of the major goals in synthetic biology. Many breakthroughs have been achieved in the last decade, however, the creation of a fully synthetic cell is yet a milestone to reach for. A common approach tries to build up artificial cells from scratch, whereas we want to start by engineering artificial compartments through orthogonalization. For designing these new compartments we plan to establish an open source toolbox accessible to the community at large. This will make it possible to boot up a compartment perfectly tailored for a specific application, which will enable cheaper and more efficient production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, or high value chemicals.
+
Engineers have long used the technique of designing, testing and redesigning components of larger machines in order to improve them. Because they understand every detail of the machine they are able to accurately predict the behavior of each part. This has lead to the development of ever-more useful tools.
−
</p>
+
<br>
+
Every Biologist dreams of being able to utilize this process with the same efficiency. They spend a whole lot of time planning the part and its function in the respective organism. Then they integrate the part and find out that it either doesn't work, kills the cell or does something else unexpected. This is because most of the time the organism is not completely understood and there is interference with some part of the metabolism. Our aim is to remove this problem! Our team "artico", which stands for artificial compartments, has created a fully customizable cell compartment toolbox which can be used to create a reaction room inside a cell tailored exactly to the users needs. Our compartment can import proteins specifically chosen by the user, change its luminal environment as well as its size, and secrete its content to the extracellular medium. It can be used for a wide variety of purposes, be it basic research, compartmentation of toxic metabolic pathways, or even more exotic functions such as in vivo protein crystallization.</p>
+
+
<!--
+
<h2>Revolutionize your production</h2>
+
<p>Let's face it: synthetic biology is not yet where we all want it to be. Despite the effort to standardize parts in biobricks, the devices and systems are not expressed equally in all chassis. Sometimes they are not expressed at all. This severely impedes free choice of the products you can produce and the hosts to produce them in. <strong>We are changing that.</strong>
+
<br>
+
The two major issues regarding biosynthesis are metabolic crosstalk and toxic intermediates of the production pathways. Both these problems can be solved by our project. Nature's way of isolating important or toxic pathways is to confine them into organelles. But as engineers we need an empty compartment to start with. We need <strong>artificial compartments</strong>. This is what artico is all about. We established an open source toolbox to orthogonalize the peroxisome into a fully controllable compartment. This enables cheaper and more efficient production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals and other high value chemicals.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.</p>
+
</div>
+
<div id="silver" class="tabcontent">
+
<h3>Silver</h3>
+
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.</p>
+
</div>
+
<div id="gold" class="tabcontent">
+
<h3>Bronze</h3>
+
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.</p>
+
</div>
+
<div id="special" class="tabcontent">
+
<h3>Silver</h3>
+
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.</p>
+
</div>
+
+
+
+
<!--
+
<h3>Designing a Customizable Synthetic Cell Compartment Toolbox</h3>
+
<p>
+
Synthetic organisms provide a wide range of applications with the potential to tackle the biggest challenges humanity faces. Their creation is therefore one of the major goals in synthetic biology. Many breakthroughs have been achieved in the last decade, however, the creation of a fully synthetic cell is yet a milestone to reach for. A common approach tries to build up artificial cells from scratch, whereas we want to start by engineering artificial compartments through orthogonalization. For designing these new compartments we plan to establish an open source toolbox accessible to the community at large. This will make it possible to boot up a compartment perfectly tailored for a specific application, which will enable cheaper and more efficient production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, or high value chemicals.
Designing a Customizable Synthetic Cell Compartment Toolbox
Have you ever looked at an airplane and thought about how intricately each part has to be designed to fit into the overall machine?
Engineers have long used the technique of designing, testing and redesigning components of larger machines in order to improve them. Because they understand every detail of the machine they are able to accurately predict the behavior of each part. This has lead to the development of ever-more useful tools.
Every Biologist dreams of being able to utilize this process with the same efficiency. They spend a whole lot of time planning the part and its function in the respective organism. Then they integrate the part and find out that it either doesn't work, kills the cell or does something else unexpected. This is because most of the time the organism is not completely understood and there is interference with some part of the metabolism. Our aim is to remove this problem! Our team "artico", which stands for artificial compartments, has created a fully customizable cell compartment toolbox which can be used to create a reaction room inside a cell tailored exactly to the users needs. Our compartment can import proteins specifically chosen by the user, change its luminal environment as well as its size, and secrete its content to the extracellular medium. It can be used for a wide variety of purposes, be it basic research, compartmentation of toxic metabolic pathways, or even more exotic functions such as in vivo protein crystallization.
Medal Criteria
Bronze
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.
Silver
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.
Bronze
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.
Silver
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam viverra sem commodo dui ultrices, ut varius dui ultrices. Quisque interdum eleifend erat vitae lobortis. Vestibulum dapibus erat sed justo fermentum ullamcorper. Praesent molestie eros non purus hendrerit, cursus pretium lorem malesuada. Nulla in enim in est congue mollis. Ut dui mauris, ultrices id ultricies et, cursus et urna. Suspendisse potenti. Ut lobortis interdum condimentum. Pellentesque scelerisque ante vitae accumsan tincidunt. Vivamus non urna fringilla, eleifend purus sit amet, aliquam magna. Vivamus nisl mauris, suscipit a neque sit amet, semper ultricies nunc. Curabitur et augue a purus convallis sagittis sed in odio. Maecenas vitae maximus neque, a tincidunt diam.
Real world application
By integrating enzymes or biosynthetic pathways into semi-permeable organelles we gain higher concentrations of enzymes and metabolites and provide a basis for the ideal operation of specialized enzymes. Furthermore, toxic or unstable intermediates can be sustained and naturally incompatible reactions can take place simultaneously. We have chosen yeast peroxisomes as our chassis for designing this synthetic organelle, which are very resistant, have a useful import mechanism and are expendable under optimal conditions. As a proof of concept for our compartimentation strategy we intend to establish the Nootkatone pathway inside the peroxisome. Nootkatone is a natural compound found inside the peel of the grapefruit, which gives it its characteristic taste and smell. In addition to that, Nootkatone is a natural repellent for mosquitoes and ticks and is already being commercially used and industrially manufactured. Unfortunately, the production costs for it are extremely high, because it either must be extracted from the peels of hundred of thousands of grapefruits or synthesized inside of yeast. The problem here is, that the Nootkatone pathway is toxic for yeast and the efficiency is rather low. Here is where our compartmentation comes into play, as we plan to implement the hole pathway into the modified peroxisome.
