Mini-bootcamp 2011

This page contains a description of the mini-bootcamp run in Feb 2011.

Group

Students Jorge Goncalves Jun Lie Yuan Ye Enoch Yeung

Part-time students Elisa Franco Richard Murray

Instructors Emzo de los Santos Joe Meyerowitz Ophelia Venturelli Vanessa Jonsson

Project advisor Richard Murray

Project description

The goal of this project is to measure variability in gene expression that is relevant for synthetically designed circuits. The issue that we are trying to understand is now much variability arises for the expression of a given circuit under degrees of freedom that are typically not controlled in synthetic designs: Location and orientation of circuit elements in the plasmid Vectors used for expressing the circuit, including copy number and antibiotic resistance Growth conditions (temperature, oxygen, media, growth phase) To understand how these (and other) factors will affect circuit operation, a simple genetic circuit consisting of 1 or 2 promoters will be built and implemented in a variety of conditions. The dynamic response of the circuit will be measured, including cell-to-cell variability (via flow cytometry or microscopy). Project objectives: Characterize the differences (if any) in mean expression level for a standard circuit (PtetR:GFP) in different backbones, growth media, antibiotic concentrations, inducer levels, etc Characterize differences in expression distributions (if any) using flow cytometry; use cell sorting to check for differences in cell phenotype Construct a simple circuit using different design choices and characterize differences in expression level (and distribution)	Circuit layout: directions, ordering
	Copy number Origin of replication Antibiotic resistance Biobrick plasmids
	(Cell strain) Growth media: LB, M9/glycerol, M9/glucose Induction level Temperature