Difference between revisions of "Part:BBa K523001"

Revision as of 23:41, 9 September 2011

RBS + malS (E. coli periplasmic α-amylase)

This is the E. coli amylase gene malS. The part contains the native Ribosome Binding Site.

The part was made using the strategy outlined in BBa_K523000, and therefore contains 4 extra bases at the 5' end which generate a BglII restriction site.

Usage and Biology

The product protein is believed to be periplasmic and thus ought to only degrade starch if it leaks from the periplasm in significant quantities. Its natural function in E. coli presumably involves degrading shorter glucose chains.

The SignalP program predicts that a 17 amino acid localisation signal (at the N terminal) is cleaved off before the protein reaches its mature form.

Experiments

We (Edinburgh 2011) placed this part under the control of the lac promoter and streaked colonies on a starch agar plate. A negative control without this construct was also streaked out. The cells were incubated for 3 days.

One colony failed to grow for some reason, but the others did. We flooded the plate with iodine, which turns black in the presence of starch:

We made three observations:

1. The area under the negative control turned black, while the areas under the malS streaks did not.
2. The iodine gradually evaporated, turning the plate clear again.
3. After 30 minutes, halos were seen around the two malS streaks.

We can think of two ways to explain observation 1:

• malS degraded starch, or:
• the control cells grew slower than the malS cells for some reason, and thus formed a thinner layer; iodine could pass through that layer to turn the starch underneath black, but could not pass through the malS layer.

However, observation 3, the halos, seem to rule out this second explanation, and instead suggest actual diffusion of a starch-degrading enzyme (MalS) into the agar.

Sequence and Features