MIT 2006

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See our wiki at [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:MIT/2006 MIT iGEM 2006 at OpenWetWare]. (Far more information available there!)

Contents

Members

The MIT iGEM team consists of 5 students working fulltime during summer 2006 on engineering a biological system. In addition, we have 5 graduate student advisors and 2 faculty advisors.

From left to right: Stephen Payne, Boyuan Zhu, Tom Knight, Reshma Shetty, Andre Green, Samantha Sutton, Veena Venkatachalam, Jason Kelly, Austin Che, Barry Canton and Kate Broadbent. Not shown but there in spirit: Drew Endy. Photo courtesy of Heather Keller, MIT

Students

  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Skatebro Kate Broadbent]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Dagreen Andre Green]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Stephen Stephen Payne]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Veenav Veena Venkatachalam]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Boyuanzhu Boyuan Zhu]

Email us: team AT igem.mit.edu

Advisors

  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Barry_Canton Barry Canton]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Austin_Che Austin Che]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Drew_Endy Drew Endy]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Jason_Kelly Jason Kelly]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Tom_Knight Tom Knight]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Reshma_Shetty Reshma Shetty]
  • [http://openwetware.org/wiki/Samantha_Sutton Samantha Sutton]

Email us: igem AT igem.mit.edu


Project overview

This summer, MIT's iGEM 2006 team is developing bacteria that smell pleasant. We have inserted several genes into bacterial genomes to make the cells produce a wintergreen and/or a banana scent. Scents can act as natural biological tags and have many extended applications. By attaching the scent tag to a case-sensitive promoter, we engineered a cellular system to report on environmental conditions. Also, since E. coli naturally produce a fecal smelling compound, we feel that our system will be useful to scientists worldwide as it will make lab work with E. coli bacteria a little less painful. Other bacteria are responsible for producing human odor problems in the mouth, armpits, and feet. By implementing our system in these foul smelling bacteria, we could potentially develop bacterial deoderant. In addition, we could implement our system in yeast, thereby producing new flavors and scents in bread and beer. Perfuming bacterial biofilters are yet another feasible industrial application of our project.

Motivations

Our project focused on engineering Escherichia coli to produce different compounds that smell fragrant. Since scents can both act as natural reporters and have a diverse array of applications, they represent a promising but thus far unexplored area of synthetic biology.

Contributions

Devices

  1. A biosynthetic device that converts salicylic acid to methyl salicylate (or wintergreen).
  2. A biosynthetic device that converts isoamyl alcohol to isoamyl acetate (or banana smell).
  3. A PoPS source that is only active during stationary phase.
  4. A PoPS source that is only active during exponential phase.

Systems

  1. Escherichia coli capable of producing a wintergreen scent autonomously (without addition of any precursors).
  2. E. coli capable of producing a banana scent autonomously (without addition of any precursors).

Future work

Team photos

Personal tools
Past/present/future years