Team:HK SKHLPSS/Description
HK_SKHLPSS
The biodiversity of organism is originated from the information carried on DNA that it is only constructed by the fundamental Watson-Crick base pairing rules governing two basic combination of base pairs. The programmability of DNA allows the use of it as LEGO bricks to build different objects in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional manner.
In addition to showing the possibility of programming DNA into different shapes, the field of DNA nanotechnology was developed to use it for medical purposes. Under the presence of target nucleic acids, conformational change of a molecular beacon that is also consisted of DNA will occur through a simple strand displacement process. Apart from nucleic acids target, presence of metal ions is also detectable by DNA molecular beacon as it affects the stability of DNA. To detect metal ion, G-quadruplex as a four-stranded nucleic acid structure is well known that the formation of it is highly depending on cation. The formation of quadruplex is able to stabilize the molecular structure of hemin and enhance its’ peroxidase activity that leads to the result of quantitative fluorescence or colorimetric signal.
This year, the ultimate goal of our iGEM team is trying to establish a metal ion responsive molecular beacon in E. coli as a general platform for detecting environmental contamination using bacteria. In order to achieve this progressively, we will first perform the experiment in vitro using molecular beacon that consists of short oligos as a prove of concept. Then we will try to express the system in E. coli and conduct the same experiment using laboratory prepared sample and on-site collected sample for the detection of contamination.
