IGEM:Cambridge/2008/Turing Pattern Formation

Overview

This project seeks to generate Turing Patterns by creating a Reaction-Diffusion system in the gram-positive bacteria Bacillus subtilis. We need to integrate two signalling systems into this bacterium and use an autofeedback mechanism to generate self-organizing patterns from random noise. We plan to incorporate the agr peptide signalling system from S. aureus and the lux AHL system from V. fisheri.

Notable Papers/Pages

Turing Patterns/Reaction Diffusion Patterns

Short introduction to reaction/diffusion systems and pattern formation

Bacillus subtilis

B. Subtilis Transformation Protcol - Electroporation

Bongers et al. … of a Subtilin-Regulated Expression System in Bacillus subtilis: Strict Control of Gene Expression …. Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2005) - handy expression system for B. subtilis

• What about feedback/regulation effects of subtilin on the cell

Expression and characterization of aiiA gene from Bacillus subtilis BS-1.

• (Some strains of) Bacillus subtilis produce a gene called aiiA that degrades AHL molecules from gram-negative bacteria...?

agr system

mutual exclusion between agr systems from different S. aureus strains

• could we model this behavhior? could lead to interesting behavior...

Identification of the Putative Staphylococcal AgrB Catalytic Residues Involving the Proteolytic Cleavage of AgrD to Generate Autoinducing Peptide

• AIP is cleaved frm the propeptide on export, it looks like no other machinery is needed

lux system

cyclic dipeptides bind competitively and antagonize AHLs in luxR-based signalling..can we exploit?

Quorum Sensing/Cell-Cell Communication

great general overview of QS in both gram-neg and gram-pos bacteria