SB Tools

Our first successful attempt in the field of synthetic biology was development of a versatile expression vector for production of two-domain proteins. We started from the synthetic biology cloning standard vector pSB1AC3 and in a stepwise manner built a vector that was later used with success for anti-prion protein single-chain antibody fragments. For details, see our 2009 paper in  Protein Expression and Purification.

Next, we developed a system for measuring promoter strength. In contrast to the great majority of such devices that rely on fluorescence measurements, we constructed a vector device in which the reporter is actually the antibiotic resistance protein. Accordingly, cell culture density is proportional to promoter strength. Vector itself is very small and it enables easy exchange of promoter sequences. In addition a Web-bases tool was prepared for on-line evaluation of turbidity measurements. Details are published in the 2010 Analytical Biochemistry paper.

Biosafety

Biosaferty was in the forefront of our synthetic biology experiments in 2012-15 period. We wished to implement devices for induced cell death, so-called kill switches that could be turned on in the case cyanobacteria escape the controlled environment in which they are grown. We used two basic approaches, using cyanobacterial toxin-antitoxin modules and using nuclease/inhibitor module. Read more ...

iGEM

After being a minor mentoring partner of Slovenian iGEM teams in 2006 and 2007, in 2015 we joined forces with the National Institute of Chemistry (NIC) in mentoring the first-ever Slovenian high school team. Synthetic biology experiments were performed in our lab while biotechnology was in the domain of the NIC.

High school students joined our group for a project on biofuels in 2015.