Team Contributions
The team completed three contribution projects. First, FSU iGEM teams are curating the BIOFAB Collection of parts. This year we added an interactive bar graph for the Modular and Randomized Promoter Libraries. Members of the iGEM community can now hover over a promoter of interest to see the quantitative strength of the promoter then click on the bar to be taken to the part's page on the iGEM Parts Registry. Second, we created a template on BioRender with all the glyphs from Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual (SBOL Visual), a standard for visual specification of biological parts, devices, and systems. Members of the iGEM community can now easily use SBOL Visual in a web-based tool that supports drawing beautiful and professional diagrams. Third, the team in collaboration with the Baltimore BioCrew aggregated a list of all the iGEM teams working on projects related to eutrophication and algae blooms. Members of the iGEM community interested on working on a new project can now easily find other teams that have worked or are working on those type of projects.
BIOFAB Modular and Randomized Promoter Libraries
Checkout FSU iGEM's BIOFAB Promotor Library
As our team prepared to design our vectors, we encountered an important question “how much expression would we like to have on Cerevisiae?” This is an essential design question, since too much expression could be harmful to our host organism. On the other hand, too low an expression might yield an amount of product that is too low to detect. In turn, our team conducted vast research on the literature, iGEM registry, and experts about different ways to control the expression of our enzymes. Overall, we found that promoters play an essential role in regulating the amount of transcription of a specific gene sequence. To facilitate the selection of promoters to other iGEM teams, we have added further documentation to FSU iGEM's BIOFAB promoter library.
Thanks to Isis Le-Tolbert, the BIOFAB promoter library documentation has now been expanded with more curated data (now accessible on the iGEM parts registry). The purpose of the BIOFAB collection is to make genetic engineering more efficient by providing detailed information of different promoters with varuing strengths. Currently, FSU iGEM's BIOFAB collection contains data on constitutive promoters, transcription terminators, and 5' untranslated regions (5' UTRs). The constitutive promoters and transcription terminators were added to the iGEM Parts Registry to provide the public with quantitative measurements regarding their strengths of gene expression.
Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual Glyphs - Now Available On Biorender
Checkout the Biorender SBOL Icon Library
As our project developed, the need to use synthetic biology symbols to communicate our project rapidly emerged. The nature of synthetic biology requires the use of symbols to facilitate educating the broader public about our methods and designs. Without the use of symbols, it can be challenging to communicate the science and engineering pieces of our project. We were surprised to find a lack of open-source symbols available for iGEM teams to use. Next, we decided to create a library of symbols and make it available to the public, with the goal of facilitating communication about synthetic biology projects.
This year, an effort was made to integrate Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) icons into an open source Biorender library for future iGEM teams. Courtesy of Franklin Pacheco, this biorender SBOL icon library can now be accessed right here on our wiki (click image above). If any troubles arise when accessing the library, feel free to contact Franklin via email: fap18h@fsu.edu.