Bryan Hernandez

Projects

Construction and Characterization of Riboregulators

A Riboregulator is a post-transcriptional regulator. Its mechanism for regulation involves the occlusion of the Ribosome via a hairpin on the mRNA transcript in the 'off' state thereby preventing (or 'locking') translation of the ORF. The 'on' state is recovered by introducing a complementary sequence (or 'key') that disrupts the hairpin on the mRNA transcript allowing the Ribosome to bind and initiate translation. To learn more, go here.

• UROP Proposal

Addressable Conjugation in Bacterial Networks

iGEM UC Berkeley

• Our project was to create an addressable cell-to-cell communication mechanism in e. coli.
  

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Sortostat

The Sortostat is a microfluidic chemostat integrated with a cell sorter. My project consists of demonstrating the sortostat's chemostat functionality, a technique rarely seen in microfluidics.

Immediate Goals

• Debug all engineering-related problems with sortostat.
• Demonstrate Sortostat's ability to attain chemostasis in a population of E. Coli.
• Demonstrate Sortostat's ability to sort two phenotypically different populations of E. Coli. In this case, I will be using a mixture of E. Coli expressing CFP and YFP.
• Demostrate Sortostat's ability to select for an arbitrary population of cells that are phenotypically different from others and maintain this population at a steady state.
• UROP Proposal
• Chemostat Theory
• Sortostat/Experiments
• Sortostat/Growth Tests

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Bio

• I am currently an undergraduate researcher in the Endy Lab at MIT. I am currently building and characterizing orthogonal riboregulators. Learn more about riboregulators and the work I have done here
• MIT Class of 2009; Majoring in Mathematics and Biological Engineering.