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Good morning i'm Daniel and he is Diego and we are here to talk about what we
have done in iGEM 2012 in the university of Nuevo Leon, and we're here to present
what we're doing for iGem 2012.We're going to talk about what we have done,
we're doing and what we will do. To begin, this is what we did in the 2011, we took it
as antecedent it's important because it's the first time we participated in iGEM. We
launched a team and we presented a project called HuBac's science and it was
about logic gates, i heard around there that there are logic gates lovers here, we
like them too. And we were working with a circuit of genetic regulation where we use
two lights as inputs, noninvasive, and configured 5 outputs independently.
There was an antecedent of another team that did it with one light against 4 outputs
but they weren't independent, they were serialized, first they put one, then another
and then another and this one were independent. This is the circuit, with
which we participated last year, it's a little bit complex, there are three cells in which
they are interacting by quorum sensing, basically one receives red light, the other
one receives green light and the other one interacts by quorum sensing with the
other two. The important part here is what is referred to as the CI part, let's say that
when the input goes in, it activates CI, if you remember CI is a lambda gene and it
acts as a natural biphasic switch, that means that normally promoter pRM
activates it in low concentrations of CI and in high concentrations of RP. So, we
were playing around with that and said well if we can separate a promoter that is
activated and repressed and one that can only be activated such as pRM434 why
not use it for independent circuits, we replicated the circuits, we interact them
by quorum sensing so that move mutually, we duplicate them and we add a
fifth cell that can respond to both. So basically the important part here is the
interaction between the three cells and the biphasic switch. We were working
working in everything concerning the project, from the induction with light part
we were in contact with Dr. Tabor from Rice University in Houston and we
obtained the information of what filters of light they used for the specific wave
length, actually it is very important that in other teams that had done experiments
with light they hadn't controlled well neither the intensity nor the wave length
and in Tabor's work it indicated that receptors were very specific. We
constructed an incubator, it was adapted to activate both red light and green light
and both at the same time, we ordered filters. I't interesting because a company
that does filters for the army's weapons' sight did these. The photoreceptors were
handled with an integration system so that we could have a stable strain that
could respond directly to light, both to red and green light with the ccaR system
and ZH8MNT for red light. This is an integration system that was donated by
Washington's University. We were working with this, in the machine and
circuit and referring to what was asked in the end, based on the idea, we completed
a mathematical model that considered the whole unit, we obtained five independent
receptors, there is cell one on the left, cell two and cell three, we modeled cell three
and did experiments with cell three directly with inputs and we characterized
the part. And referring to human practices and collaboration we did a blog, that was
about technology and synthetic biology diffusion, we had a big impact with an
article that was published from the database of every iGem project, we did a
recompilation (which took as a while) we reviewed from 2007 till 2010, what was
available at the time, and we commented on everything, it was a very simple way of
revising every project, what they were about, who had done it, what they had
done. We were collaborating with other teams,
you know how last year there was a theme of working with light, there were
about 6 or 7 teams that worked with light, we distribuited some parts we were able
to share some parts parts, so we collaborated a little bit. So, taking this in
mind, we said well what do we expect from iGem 2012, so when we started this,
which was in the beginning of January, February we planned it and said well let's
try to include more things, actually they told us that last year, so let's add a new
focus, the project had it's experiments and model, which we had already done,
and we wanted to include a part of that which we already saw [inaudible].
Regarding the project, Hubac's science, you know how a lot of what we
commented the emails was that we wanted to see the principal problems, one
of our principal problems, was that even though they are biobricks and they are
supposedly easy to ligate it doesn't always work like that, they don't always
ligate, I think this has happened to everyone, I don't think that we are the
only ones, and we were missing a part to conclude, so we said well let's finish what
we started, not only take it as a course but as a project, so we finished that and
we decided to give an e. cological theme and we did a project. Regarding the
previous project it was characterizing these two parts, just the red light
photocassette and the biphasic switch which is the central core of our project.
And regarding e. cologic it is a problematic based on heavy metal
contamination. As you are all aware, in Mexico and in the world there is a
problem of heavy metal contamination and it is not just a small problem, it is
serious and there is a big interest on behalf of many institutes to solve this
problem. So, we focused on arsenic because there are people in our team that
are from Torreon so they know about this problem. We took some antecedents and
we saw that from the best projects that there have been there were biosensors
and some that capture included from 2007. They haven't always been able to
recover cells, they just use a sensor that says if there is or there isn't. Some use
[inaudible] or some phytokeratines from plants to recover, but not all of them have
used a cellular recovery system. Groningen, in 2009, I believe, introduced
gas vesicles to make cells float, once that they captured the arsenic they floated,
only that they didn't work very well, there are some people that used phototaxis to
recover, they wanted to place a bulb and they would attach to the bulb to recover
them and other people that have used antibodies, those are the principal ones.
We noticed that in this there are several problems, actually in Conayct there are
several projects that handle arsenic biosensors, or other heavy metals but it is
always a problem where probably a lot of cells are lost or you have to use a
chemical immunoprecipitation, it isn't always biological. So let's add the e.
cologic project as biosensor, as acumulation of arsenic and we put a part
which is our central part which is in silica joining. Since we have a protein called
AIDA which has the capacity of attaching to silica or glass or any derivative that
has the silica molecule so we said well the way it works, e. cologic would be poured
somewhere, it would sense and recognize, that has been done before and
capture and then we would recover the cells, it is interesting because the
experiments we have done recover close to 99 percent of the cells so it is known
that they can work very well, and the other thing is that it can be seen as silica
union there are many things that have silica so you can do a silica filter, or a
device that already has the cells fixed with silica or you can throw silica pearls
to a culture and recover it, you can do a lot of things, you that only have to be
careful not to use glass flask because all the cells will stick, so you have to use a
plastic flask. So that is a complete system of bioremediation and sensor. And
regarding human practices, as they have commented there is a high tendency of
giving talks to high schools and junior high schools, so we said well we haven't
tried it, so let's add this, we started like this, in 2012 we started with talks in high
schools and junior high school where we talked to them about what DNA is, what is
biotechnology, genetic engineering, what is synthetic biology, iGEM, biobricks, we
talked to them about ethics, risks, projects, and at the same time we taught
them in a practical and fast way how manipulation of nucleic acid isn't
something from another world, sometimes people think of nucleic acids and DNA and
they think of what they see in movies, they think of what they see in movies,
they think that it is a very complex machine, that one will put something like
what is in the Resident Evil movie, that has a molecule shape and that that is
DNA, but no, we did a demonstration with pineapple juice and banana which is a
very easy way of extracting DNA; it is just a chemical reaction, and you can see the
DNA molecule where it precipitates. So we did this and we demonstrated that there
are very simple things that if one knows how to do it, you can use them for a
bigger project. So that was done for several high schools, and in november
from last year we started in a high school from our university, we talked to them in
november about some talks called chemistry and synthetic biology in the
national week of chemistry, we were invited and we talked about chemistry. ...
To know that XbaI is compatible with SpeI and EcoRI and PstI are just the extremes,
it is something that they now saw as palpable, maybe not manipulatable, but
palpable. And to measure the impact we had, in every contest we gave the winning
team two biobricks and the team that lost one biobrick, which were juices, they are
right here in the picture, they are juices that came from "Frutsi" that are shaped
like blocks, they are called Frutsiblocks or something like that, we called them juice
bricks, so in each one we put a sticker that indicated a gene, but they didn't
know if they were really or fake, for example there were real ones of
sensitivity to green light, or activation of a gene by carbon monoxide, or oxygen
decontamination, bacteria that float in the air, things like that, so in the end we had
teams of ten kids do their own projects with their biobricks, so they would stick
them somehow and explain what they had done with them, there were interesting
things where some bacteria floated in the air, captured ozone and emitted a
reporter, so it is pretty interesting that the kids can handle these terms. So that was
an activity that we did with them and it was pretty good. This was a little bit of
what we did. We were thinking well, if high school students did a project related with
biosensors and we are doing a project with biosensors, if you look at the central
problem of people that use biosensors in the wiki, you realize that there are many
problems worldwide, not only nationally, but worldwide, so iGEM surges for the
first time this year and it comes as what happens to all those projects that they
are doing and that have a lot of potentials that only stay as projects, many times,
iGEM surges out of searching for ideas to become projects, because that is
something that happens a lot in college, one generates ideas for homework, or
one generates ideas because you are talking with your friends about saving the
world, but one never does projects, which is very common, so iGEM surges and it is
the first opportunity, in my opinion, it is the first opportunity for people in college
to turn their ideas into complete projects, to join a lab, put them together, plan
them, what do you use, what do you need, what resources and other things,
iGEMe surges practically 10 years after igem starts, in the 2012 and it surges with
a similar idea, we are generating projects with a lot of potential, so what can we do
with them? so iGEM has the initiative of fomenting the development, business
models, company models, and we said well if its the first year that we join and we
are now in high school and college, why not join here too, so that was how we
started to check that too and right now we are putting together a business plan,
sort of, referring to principally using the heavy metals arsenic system which is
what we already have a lot of information for our project, we are looking at
possibilities for this, with high school we already good role, we can't ...[inaudible]
so this would be everything referring to iGEM UANL.