IGEM:Paris Bettencourt 2012/Previous Biosafety iGEM Projects

Team	Year	Project Name	Project Summary	Biosafety Idea
St. Andrews	2011	Kill switch engage!	Kill switch	Kill switch. Our kill switch is designed by inserting an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) gene into E.Coli Read More
Imperial College	2011	Auxin	Engineer bacteria to accelerate plant root development	Toxin/antitoxin. Consits of the insertion of the Holin + Endolysine and Anti Holin genes. Read More
Bristol	2010	AgrEcoi	Bacteria that detects and signals the presence of nitrates	Encapsulation in a gel. We encapsulated our bacteria in beeds made out of a non toxic gel. Read More
Colombia	2011	Defense aid for coffee plantations against fungi ("Detect and alert" system)	Detect chitin,and alert the plant by stimulating an early hypersensitive response against infection.	A few ideas but no design: Amplification mostly from start to stop codon to avoid hidden pathogenicity + blast of sequences to confirm Cloning in vectors without a mobilizable origin or TRA region. Growth curve of the strain to confirm low dissemination. Develop a strategy to monitory the presence of the modified bacteria in the crops fields based on color markers (no design made). Read More
British Columbia	2011	iSynthase	Optimize production of terpenes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast (to help trees fight invading beetles and fungi)	A few ideas (no design): Contain a tracking system to detect their presence e.g. a non-coding DNA code akin to a fingerprint Contain a suicide system to enable effective elimination of the organism when so desired What experts say
Peking	2010	Heavy metal decontamination kit	Heavy metal bioreporter and bioabsorbent engineering	A few superficial ideas: Make the plasmid toxic for any bacteria it may transfer to. Plasmid can’t be replicated in another bacteria Read More
Brown-Stanford	2011	REGObricks PowerCell	Projects which could be useful for a space travelling: REGObricks brings the principle of In-Situ Resource Utilization to bear on the problem of constructing, maintaining and expanding shelter for human inhabitants on the desolate Martian landscape. By producing macromolecules essential to bacterial growth, PowerCell will form a metabolic foundation for the biological systems which will eventually enable a settlement on Mars.	Not about biosafety, but: The team used GelRed, a DNA dye produced by Biotium Inc, as a non-toxic alternative to ethidium bromide (EtBr). Let's use it too! They do not believe that their BioBrick parts will have any negative effect on the environment. But they could be interested by our project! Read More
KULeuven	2011	E.D. FROSTI	CONTROLLING ICE FORMATION. Bacterium E.D. Frosti induces ice crystallization, using the ice-nucleating protein (INP), or inhibits ice crystal formation, using the anti-freeze protein (AFP), depending on the given stimulus. These proteins will be extracellularly anchored at E.D. Frosti’s cell membrane.	Suicide mechanism: DNA nuclease. Destruction of the DNA > bacteria dies, but keeps its shape so it can still do its job (functional protein are at the surface of the membrane). The suicide mechanism activity is mediated by an “AND”-gate system: the cell death mechanism is only activated when one of the two stimuli is given, AND a sudden decrease in temperature (a cold-shock) occurs Read More
LMU-Munich	2011	Metal Sensor	Biosensor to detect metals in waste water	One idea (no design): Every potentially pathogenic or hazardous biobrick should be cloned in a special backbone containing the sequences of the present backbones AND an inducible killing gene cassette. This killing cassette is induced by a normaly absent reagent that could easily be added in case of contamination Read More