Team:Lethbridge/Description

“The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to EDUCATION and COMPETITION, the ADVANCEMENT of synthetic biology, and the development of an OPEN COMMUNITY and collaboration.”

For our tenth year as an iGEM team, we wanted to give back to the community and looked to the iGEM mission statement for inspiration. To align our project with the foundation, it was our goal to develop a tool to advance synthetic biology and increase its accessibility to novices, hobbyists and experts.

Cell-Free Systems

Cell-free systems allow for the reliable and consistent expression of recombinant proteins outside of a living cell, bypassing issues with genetic regulation and cellular noise [1].

Such systems are advantageous over cell-based synthetic biology due to the:

Ability to tolerate toxins normally detrimental to the cell
Ability to direct all energy resources to the application increasing the freedom of design
Inherent feature of reduced bio-contamination, as components do not replicate mutate or evolve
Easy control of transcription and translation in an open environment
Easy incorporation of unnatural amino acids
Ability to modulate the environment for optimal protein expression
Rapid design-build-test cycle
Ability to use linear and plasmid DNA as a template

Applications

Emerging as a new platform for synthetic biology, cell-free systems have shown potential for use in a variety of applications exemplifying the utility of such systems [2,3].