After conducting the experiments presented on our Experiments page, we achieved results and conducted data analysis. The following are the key results.
We successfully characterized the csoR-Based System. The system is made out of a combination of Transcription Units 1 and 2 (Figure 1), and the RFU curve is shown in Figure 2. As the RFU kept decreasing, we conclude that the csoR-Based System itself is not sensitive to copper, and that the change in RFU is likely to have been induced solely by the toxicity of copper instead.
We also characterized the existing CusR-Based System. The system is made out of Transcription Unit 3 (Figure 3), and the RFU curve is shown in Figure 4. We concluded that the currently existing CusR-Based System works as expected, and set it as a benchmark to exceed for our system.
We attempted to optimize the csoR-Based System and produced 96 mutants (78 unique sequences, registered BBa_K4494003-K4494098). Figure 5 shows the structure of Transcriptional Unit 4, which is used for this experiment. Figures 6 and 7 are respectively the heatmap and scatter plot representations of our results. For more information regarding the experimental results, please visit our Part Collections page.
We tried improving part BBa_K1980004 to obtain better results for detecting copper and examined its mutants with Transcription Unit 5. We eventually achieved 4 different sequences (registered BBa_K4494099-K4494102), whose characterizations are respectively shown in Figures 9, 10, 11, and 12. Although our attempts to find a better copper-sensitive promoter have failed, we successfully found a very strong promoter (Figure 12, registered BBa_K4494102). For more information, please refer to our Improve page.
