SynBERC:MIT/Researchers

What will we be doing in SynBERC year 1? (August 2006 -> August 2007)

Graduate Students

Barry Canton

I am engineering bacterial cells to act as cellular chassis for engineered biological systems.

Samantha Sutton

I am developing a framework for engineering Post-translational Devices (PTDs), which are devices whose input/output characteristics are modulated by protein modification. I have built two instances of translocating PTDs, called Phospholocators, and am characterizing them to ensure the easy reusual for future engineers. I am usign the knowledge gained in building the Phospholocators to develop an abstraction hierarchy, a common signal carrier, and device boundaries for PTDs.

Research Assistants

Heather Keller

I am currently working to clone the 60 bacteriophage T7 Ribosome Binding Sites (RBSs) upstream of two fluorescent reporters, either GFP or mCherry. The fluorsecent output of these constructs, as measured on a plate reader, will help to establish the relative strength of these RBS sequences in support of our efforts to rebuild the T7 genome, while also generating a library of well characterized RBSs for use in Biobricks assembly. I also hope to examine issues related to the predictable composition of biological parts by comparing the output of the two flurophores for a given RBS, as well as constructing a second version of each RBS that contains that first 5 amino acids of the native T7 protein.