From 2007.igem.org

Projects

We had a formal abstract submitted a few months ago, but to keep this short and sweet This year's Duke iGEM team is interested in tackling problems associated with engineering bacterial systems to be easily controllable by clean, macroscopic inputs in order to create useful, macroscopic products. We became obsessed with trying to find solutions to these problems. We wanted to make bacteria we could control like a computer, with electric fields and light and heat. Not stopping there, we wanted to make bacteria that could generate their own electric fields, and their own heat, and after they'd been programmed, interacted, and formed networks, we wanted bacteria that could yield precise and complex materials. Of course, we broke this up into several smaller projects.

Here are our projects for the summer:

• Electric field-activated transcription factor
• Bacterial communication with light
• Synthesis and property-control of bioplastics
• Bacterial solar fuel cell

Furthermore, as a team we were not opposed to the recombination of Sheldon Williams' and Alison Bales' DNA to clone a race of super- power forwards, but lacked the 6'-10" cloning chambers we'd need for the project. And of course, there's always this idea, but we just watched 'The Fly' again and decided against it.