Difference between revisions of "Part:BBa K3015011"

Revision as of 20:18, 21 October 2019

Riboswitch Sensor cassette

This genetic device was used to proof the functionality of a Riboswitch-based diagnostic method.

Usage and Biology

This is the genetic device we realized in the lab with a transcriptional Theophylline-Riboswitch. T7-Polymerase BBa_K3015006 will be expressed in the presence of Theophylline. This makes up our composite part BBa_K3015003. The expression of T7-Polymerase induces the strong expression of amilCP BBa_K592009, a Blue Chromoprotein, that acts as visual readout. The expression of amilCP is under the control of the T7-Promoter BBa_K3015012. The designed and constructed system can easily be adapted for detection of various disease-causing agents by just changing the riboswitch-sequence according to the target.

We could show that the part BBa_K3015011 works very well based on the positive signal due to the binding of an inducer to the aptamer, which can be easily seen with the naked eye. Our team took pictures of spun-down microtubes consisting of Escherichia coli (DH10B) strain induced under different concentrations of Theophylline and different incubation time.

The tested composite part BBa K3015011 consists of the following two constructs (see figure 1 and 2):

Figure 1: T7 Polymerase construct

Figure 1 shows our T7-Polymerase under the control of a Theophylline inducible riboswitch. If T7-Polymerase is beeing expressed in the cell it will bind to the T7-Promoter and expression of amilCP (see figure 2) takes place. The amount of expressed amilCP is proportional to the presence of T7-polymerase.


Figure 2: T7 promoter construct

For proving the functioning of the switch, we set up overnight cultures with the plasmid construct and induced them with different Theophylline concentrations. In addition to that, negative samples with the bacteria including our construct with no concentration of the toxin were added for the ability to check the leakiness of our promoter. In our pre-experiment two separate overnight cultures were incubated without Theophylline (left) and with 4mM Theophylline (right) see figure 3.


Figure 3: Overnight Cultures after 15 hours uninduced (left) and induced with 4mM Theophylline (right)

Sequence and Features