Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) offers efficient and convenient means of visualising the dynamic process of gene expression and of obtaining readout of the current state of complex gene regulatory networks - features of major interest for synthetic biology.
Stefan Milde, working in the Haseloff Lab at Cambridge as part of iGEM2008 has constructed BioBrick versions of improved GFP variants and tested their properties (Parts:BBa I746908-I746919). He has compared two recently reported GFP variants to the mut3GFP variant in the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. The two GFP variants chosen were "superfolder GFP", developed and described by Pédelacq et al (2006), which was engineered for improved fluorescence in fusion proteins and P7 GFP ("superfast GFP") which was engineered by Fisher et al (2008) and selected on the basis of its very rapid folding in vitro. Read on for more... |
(http://partsregistry.org/) |
The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) is the premiere undergraduate Synthetic Biology competition. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. This project design and competition format is an exceptionally motivating and effective teaching method.
iGEM began in January of 2003 with a month-long course during MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP). The students designed biological systems to make cells blink. This design course grew to a summer competition with 5 teams in 2004, 13 teams in 2005 - the first year that the competition grew internationally, 32 teams in 2006, 54 teams in 2007, and 84 teams from twenty-one countries in 2008. Projects have ranged from banana and wintergreen smelling bacteria, to an arsenic biosensor, to Bactoblood, and buoyant bacteria. |
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