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Our contribution to the synthetic biology community will be the investigation of Cell-Free Systems

The Imperial College iGEM 2007 team consists of ten 2nd year undergraduates from Bioengineering and Bioscience. This year our contribution to the synthetic biology community will be the investigation of Cell-Free Systems, the common platform on which Cell By Date and Infector Detector will be built. The cell-free approach is particularly useful for Synthetic Biology to operate in the medical and food industries. We believe that the characterization of this cell-free chassis will unlock fresh potential in simple constructs. Our project strategy is based on the Engineering Cycle, of which we have completed specifications and design of the systems. We are starting on modelling and implementation, and we aim to test our final constructs in the new chassis.

Infector Detector

Infector Detector is a system that will detect the presence of biofilm infections on urinary catheters by reporting on the presence of AHL, a signalling molecule used by E.''coli''. The system is able to detect very small concentrations of AHL, and outputs a fluorescent protein as a result.

Cell by Date

Cell by Date will tell you when your meat has been out of the fridge for too long. It produces fluorescent protein when it is found in an ambient temperature above a threshold of 10°C. The fluorescent protein accumulates over time, and eventually becomes visible to the naked eye once the system has been exposed to high temperatures for long enough.