User:Jonathan Cline/Notebook/Ideal Microbe

 Please edit this page to add ideas / thoughts / corrections 


 * Working in a garage-lab or skunkworks environment imposes some restrictions on choice of organisms to engineer: expensive equipment/chemicals may be unavailable, protocols may need to be simplified to reduce man-hours, etc.
 * There are many choices of host organisms for engineering, each having different strengths and weaknesses.
 * Host organisms can be genetically improved for fitness to these requirements, if a concise set of requirements are made.
 * A great example is the "eau d'e coli" project from iGEM which removed (and subsequently enhanced!) the non-desirable smelly feature of the common BioBrick host.

Requirements for The Ideal Microbe

 * "Must" means that the requirement must be met for proper acceptance.
 * "Should" means that the requirement should attempt to be met, however operation is not jeopardized by failure to meet the requirement.
 * "Hopefully" means that the requirement isn't necessary for operation, however is nice to have.

Suggested Microbes so far

 * Acinetobacter sp. ADP1
 * Lactobacillus acidophilus
 * Lactobacillus casei