Difference between revisions of "An Introduction to BioBricks"

Revision as of 16:58, 12 July 2006

BioBricks are a set of interchangable components, designed with a view to building biological systems in living cells. The picture to the left shows BioBrick BBa_0034 within a plasmid. The yellow arrow represents the antibiotic resistance gene and the green arrow, the plasmid's origin of replication.

A BioBrick represents a unique sequence of DNA; it might be a gene that codes a protein or a switch triggered by an external input, it also has a unique name. Whatever its function, a biobrick comes packaged in a plasmid, ready to be assembled into useful devices & systems.

Building BioBrick Systems

Physical parts in the DNA Repository have been designed to be assembled into systems using normal cloning techniques based on restriction enzymes, purification, ligation, and transformation - with a twist: BioBrick parts are composable. The result of assembling two parts is a new part that may be used in future assemblies.

Standard Assembly: The classical method of BioBrick assembly, done at the lab bench.; Insert pic of std assembly
Automated Assembly: Automated assembly, currently in late stage development at iGEM labs.; Insert pic of auto assembly

How do I make a BioBrick?

At the bench

Pic of biobrick flanked by coding seq

Methods:

Synthesis
PCR

More information on putting sequence into standardized Biobrick form can be found here

Adding the part to the registry

This protocol is quick and easy. A comprehensive guide can be found here

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 BioBricks are a set of interchangable components, designed with a view to building biological systems in living cells. The picture to the left shows BioBrick BBa_0034 within a plasmid. The yellow arrow represents the antibiotic resistance gene and the green arrow, the plasmid's origin of replication.
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