Wet Lab

The green alga C.reinhardtii is a promising model organism, particularly for the study of the photosynthetic apparatus. In order to reach its potential, Pierre Crozet and his nine collaborators developed a kit of standardized genetic building blocks for Modular Cloning (MoClo) for this microalga in 2018.

In order to contribute to the development of synthetic biology and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a model, we wanted to participate in the development of standardized parts for the MoClo through our project. 

In particular, we focused our efforts on the control of gene expression by adapting insulator sequences to the MoClo kit for C. reinhardtii. We also modified existing parts in order to have them in other positions in a transcription unit (level 1), such as promoter, terminator or fluorescent protein. By extending the library of existing bricks we contribute to the modularity of the MoClo kit by increasing the combinatorial possibilities.(cf. Engineering)

Furthermore, we understand the power of synthetic biology but also the importance of thinking about the safety aspects of its spread in the environment, which can lead to many problems, such as the increase of antibiotic resistance. We therefore helped the UESTC_BioTech team to develop a kill-switch to their project which also uses C. reinhardtii. For this, we have improved the kill-switch system developed by the Sorbonne iGEM team of 2020 (https://2020.igem.org/Team:Sorbonne_U_Paris/Design). If a microalga spreads into the environment, their contact with UV (natural light) triggers the system leading to cell death. (cf. Partnership)

Finally, our modeling team was able to develop a model for the growth of C.reinhardtii based on our results. This model will help others in the understanding of C.reinhardtii growth in different conditions, or to compare their normal growth with the growth of their modified algae. (cf. Model)
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Dry Lab

Since the model we used for the modeling component of our project is relatively easy to understand and universal, we believed it would be a good idea to make the model accessible to future igem teams. This model represents in the simplest ways possible the metabolism of a cell and allows the user to look specifically at the impact of a specific protein. This could be interesting for future igem projects. There we have created a github (link here) where will upload the code for our model along with the explanations of the different components to the model.