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Team:Penn Mishawaka IN
From 2014hs.igem.org
- a team description
- project description
- safety information (did your team take a safety training course? were you supervised in the lab?)
- team attribution (who did what part of your project?)
- lab notebook
- sponsor information
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Example: 2013hs.igem.org/Team:Penn_Mishawaka_IN/Our_Pets
| You can write a background of your team here. Give us a background of your team, the members, etc. Or tell us more about something of your choosing. | File:Penn Mishawaka IN logo.png |
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Tell us more about your project. Give us background. Use this as the abstract of your project. Be descriptive but concise (1-2 paragraphs) | File:Penn Mishawaka IN team.png Your team picture |
| Team Penn_Mishawaka_IN |
| Official Team Profile |
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Contents |
Team
Tell us about your team, your school!
Project
== The presence of arsenic in drinking water provides a complicated obstacle for
developing countries. Some 100 million people are affected by arsenic poisoning
worldwide, and the problem is exasperated by the unpredictable patterns of contamination.
This necessitates frequent and comprehensive testing of well water; Bangladesh alone has
10 million water wells that must be checked twice a year. Effective arsenic tests have been
created in the past, yet they often require expensive reagents, advanced technology and
specialized technicians – not feasible for large-scale operations in the developing world.
Our team endeavors to create a simple, biologically-based test for arsenic. Using
existing BioBricks and building off the ideas of previous iGEM projects, we have designed
two systems that work within E.coli to detect the presence of arsenic in a water supply and
generate a strong, noticeable response. The first links an arsR promoter (BBa_J33201)
turned on in the presence of arsenic to a firefly luciferase reporter gene (BBa_K325909)
that emits a bioluminescent glow. Additionally in the system is a second luciferase reporter
gene, (BBa_K325209) attached to a constitutive gene that will constantly emit
bioluminescence of a different color to serve as an indicator of normal cell function. Ideally,
the end result would be cells that will glow in a dark room, change colors (yellow to green)
in the presence of arsenic, and stop glowing entirely if they are killed by arsenic or any
other toxin.
Additionally, we are in the process of designing a cascade sequence to detect and
react to the presence of arsenic. A cascade sequence provides the benefit of
customizability: we can control the reaction at many levels, both by ensuring when the
sequence is turned on or off and by controlling the amount of output created by the system
at different levels of arsenic.
==
Headline text
Notebook
Show us how you spent your days.
Results/Conclusions
What did you achieve over the course of your semester?
Safety
What safety precautions did your team take? Did you take a safety training course? Were you supervised at all times in the lab?
Attributions
Who worked on what?
Human Practices
What impact does/will your project have on the public?
Fun!
What was your favorite team snack?? Have a picture of your team mascot?
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