Genetically Engineered Microorganisms Containing Streptavidin for Environmental Monitoring

摘要

This project had three specific aims. The first was the design, creation, and testing of genetically engineered microorganisms that degrade specific hazardous compounds and then self-destruct under natural environmental conditions. The second was to design and characterize novel self-assembly systems to generate small structural biomaterials for biological and materials science applications. The third was to develop sensitive monitoring systems for microorganisms usable in the field. In the first project, we successfully created a streptavidin-based suicide system. We also designed a supplementary, potentially very powerful suicide system and constructed part of it. In the second project, anti-parallel coiled-coil sequences have successfully been fused to the C-terminus of streptavidin. In the third project, green flourescent protein (GFP) has been fused to streptavidin, and the resulting fusion has shown potential promise for the GFP moiety to become a sensitive monitoring tag usable in the field.