| Team
|
Year
|
Project Name
|
Project Summary
|
Biosafety Idea
|
| St. Andrews
|
2011
|
Kill switch engage!
|
Kill switch
|
Kill switch. Our kill switch is designed by inserting an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) gene into E.Coli
Read More
|
| Imperial College
|
2011
|
Auxin
|
Engineer bacteria to accelerate plant root development
|
Toxin/antitoxin. Consits of the insertion of the Holin + Endolysine and Anti Holin genes.
Read More
|
| Bristol
|
2010
|
AgrEcoi
|
Bacteria that detects and signals the presence of nitrates
|
Encapsulation in a gel. We encapsulated our bacteria in beeds made out of a non toxic gel.
Read More
|
| Colombia
|
2011
|
Defense aid for coffee plantations against fungi ("Detect and alert" system)
|
Detect chitin,and alert the plant by stimulating an early hypersensitive response against infection.
|
A few ideas but no design:
- Amplification mostly from start to stop codon to avoid hidden pathogenicity + blast of sequences to confirm
- Cloning in vectors without a mobilizable origin or TRA region.
- Growth curve of the strain to confirm low dissemination.
- Develop a strategy to monitory the presence of the modified bacteria in the crops fields based on color markers (no design made).
Read More
|
| British Columbia
|
2011
|
iSynthase
|
Optimize production of terpenes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast (to help trees fight invading beetles and fungi)
|
A few ideas (no design):
- Contain a tracking system to detect their presence e.g. a non-coding DNA code akin to a fingerprint
- Contain a suicide system to enable effective elimination of the organism when so desired
What experts say
|
| Peking
|
2010
|
Heavy metal decontamination kit
|
Heavy metal bioreporter and bioabsorbent engineering
|
A few superficial ideas:
- Make the plasmid toxic for any bacteria it may transfer to.
- Plasmid can’t be replicated in another bacteria
Read More
|
| Brown-Stanford
|
2011
|
REGObricks
PowerCell
|
Projects which could be useful for a space travelling:
- REGObricks brings the principle of In-Situ Resource Utilization to bear on the problem of constructing, maintaining and expanding shelter for human inhabitants on the desolate Martian landscape.
- By producing macromolecules essential to bacterial growth, PowerCell will form a metabolic foundation for the biological systems which will eventually enable a settlement on Mars.
|
Not about biosafety, but:
- The team used GelRed, a DNA dye produced by Biotium Inc, as a non-toxic alternative to ethidium bromide (EtBr). Let's use it too!
They do not believe that their BioBrick parts will have any negative effect on the environment. But they could be interested by our project!
Read More
|
| KULeuven
|
2011
|
E.D. FROSTI
|
CONTROLLING ICE FORMATION.
- Bacterium E.D. Frosti induces ice crystallization, using the ice-nucleating protein (INP), or inhibits ice crystal formation, using the anti-freeze protein (AFP), depending on the given stimulus.
- These proteins will be extracellularly anchored at E.D. Frosti’s cell membrane.
|
Suicide mechanism: DNA nuclease.
- Destruction of the DNA > bacteria dies, but keeps its shape so it can still do its job (functional protein are at the surface of the membrane).
- The suicide mechanism activity is mediated by an “AND”-gate system: the cell death mechanism is only activated when one of the two stimuli is given, AND a sudden decrease in temperature (a cold-shock) occurs
Read More
|
| LMU-Munich
|
2011
|
Metal Sensor
|
Biosensor to detect metals in waste water
|
One idea (no design):
- Every potentially pathogenic or hazardous biobrick should be cloned in a special backbone containing the sequences of the present backbones AND an inducible killing gene cassette.
- This killing cassette is induced by a normaly absent reagent that could easily be added in case of contamination
Read More
|
| Lyon-INSA-ENS
|
2011
|
Cobalt Buster
|
Decontamination of radioactive cobalt in water by a biofilm
|
Biofilm & Adherence =
- confinement bacterias
- easy purification of water
Read More
|
| METU-Ankara
|
2011
|
MethanE.COLIc
|
Sensing methane gas and converting it into methanol
|
Kill switch = Toxin temperature induced
- Holin + Endolysine
- Induced when T°>42°C
Read More
|
| WITS-CSIR_SA
|
2011
|
Biotweet
|
Engineer bacteria to allow them to transport packets of chemicals, and then form a network.
|
Promoter responsive to synthetic chemicals not present in nature.
Read More
|
| ULB-Brussels
|
2011
|
One-step gene insertion or deletion system
|
An easy way to allowing the insertion and/or deletion of genes in the E. coli chromosome in a minimal number of steps
|
FLP recombination to remove resistance gene, eg. FRT - Cm - FRT will remove the Cm resistance gene
Read More
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