Our overarching goal throughout this competition has been to provide resources for future iGEM Teams. We are certain that the expertise gained by each iGEM team will be of great use to future iGEM participants. Since we benefited much from the work of our predecessors’ wiki pages, we've decided to make a contribution page that is as helpful as possible for teams that will come after us. Our contribution comprises four aspects: Part Contribution, Phototroph Guide, iGEM 2022 Interlaboratory study and Hardware design.
We reviewed numerous resources to design our parts and have now gathered a substantial amount of information for some of them, both from experiments and literature review. These are the parts that we have documented best in the Registry.
| Part Name | Part BBa | Description | Type of contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| pNOS | BBa_K3900009 | The Nopaline Synthase promoter (NOS promoter) is a relatively weak promoter, proven to work in plants and a standardized Phytobrick. | Literature review/Experimental Results | TetR | BBa_K4213001 | The Tetracycline Repressor is a repressor protein that binds to specific operator sequences and regulates transcription in response to tetracycline presence. | Literature review/ Experimental Results |
| TPP Riboswitch | BBa_K4213000 | The TPP riboswitch is an RNA sensor that regulates thiamine-pyrophosphate biosynthesis in plants. We used it as a template to design our new riboswitches. | Literature review |
We collaborated with several iGEM teams interested in Phototrophs Synthetic Biology, to provide the community with a revised version of the 2021 Phototroph Handbook. Early in the design of our constructs, we faced the problem of choosing an appropriate pair of regulators. Therefore, when the opportunity of contributing to the Handbook was given to us, we authored two chapters; one in synthetic regulatory circuits for plants and one in the Golden Braid 2.0 Phytobrick assembly method. The information we have gathered in these chapters should help future iGEM teams make the best choices regarding plant regulatory mechanisms (like repressors, switches, etc.) and cloning techniques (we give a well-rounded comparison of Golden Braid and the others. We believe our contribution to the Phototroph Handbook would be a valuable resource for new iGEM Teams who want to do plant synthetic biology research.
We are very excited to present our results from the Sixth Interlab Study, aimed at minimizing sources of variability in Synthetic Biology experimental measurements. This year, the Engineering Committee gave the chance to iGEM teams to contribute meaningfully to this endeavor, by conducting these experiments in their own laboratories with materials provided through the iGEM Distribution Kit. Our team, as part of the interlab 2022 study, contributes to the Synbio community not only by establishing a baseline for replicability of fluorescence measurements but also by documenting comments on the issues that were faced throughout the study, aimed at helping future teams organize their own lab-time more effectively.
Biomaterials science is an emerging field whose applications are increasing with the advancement of science and the need for a limited environmental footprint. Μycelium is a new biomaterial under research and is a milestone in the construction of our wetland. Here, we present a guide for constructing the mycelium platform, helping future iGEM teams who want to include biomaterials in hardware design. The manual contains a blueprint and a 3D printing of the mold in which the mycelium will grow. It also includes step-by-step instructions on how to grow it.