Overview
For our contribution to iGEM we wanted to present different sections of our project that could be useful for future iGEM teams. Overall, we selected 4 different sections: new parts, regulation report, dry lab work and education documents.
New parts
We contributed to the iGEM parts registry by designing a total of 4 new basic parts. In particular, we designed 3 new basic parts encoding long hairpin RNA (lhRNA) and one encoding the coat protein of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV).
Concerning lhRNAs, we had trouble synthesizing these sequences because DNA manufacturers are not able to synthesize sequences with repeats over 19 bp. Therefore, we decided to divide our sequences into two: one sequence encoding the sense sequence of our hairpin RNA and one sequence encoding the antisense sequence of our hairpin RNA. To be able to assemble these two parts, we chose our loop sequence so that it contained the restriction site of the enzyme NdeI. Even if we were not able to characterize our sequences, we hope that the way we designed our sequences will help future teams interesting in RNA interference.
In addition, at the end of our antisense parts, we added the Origin of Assembly Sequence (OAS) of the TMV. As for the lhRNA, we were not able to characterize this sequence and prove its role in the encapsulation of nucleotide sequences with the coat proteins of the TMV but we hope it will inspire future teams to do so and help them demonstrating the encapsulation.
Finally, we designed a new basic part encoding the coat protein of the TMV. As well as the OAS sequence, we hope future teams will be able to continue the work on the encapsulation of nucleotide sequence thanks to the design of this new basic part. The full list of parts with links to the registry is available on the Parts page.
Regulation report
In the process of our project and especially human practices, we realized that there was a lack of knowledge about the regulations and laws around RNAi pesticides. Therefore, we decided to write a review of the current regulations and laws for RNAi pesticides. We chose to focus on Europe for this analysis, since we plan to sell our solution first in France and then Europe. In addition, the GMOs in Europe are tightly regulated and it is difficult to understand what is or is not considered as a GMO. With this report, we hope to help everyone in understanding better the regulations in terms of GMOs and products derived from GMOs in Europe.
Dry lab tools
In the dry lab section, we developed three tools that will be useful for the iGEM community. The first tool, SafeRNA, calculates potential off-target effects that could arise from our lhRNA. Future iGEM teams could use it to verify the specificity of their own double-stranded RNA constructs. The second tool, PrediRNA, estimates the evolutionary rate of the Beet Yellows Virus genome, allowing predictions of the most probable sequences in the coming years. It could assist future teams in predicting mutations for the organism of their choice. Finally, the third tool, Aphidisperse, predicts the timing of aphid arrival in sugar beet fields, enabling optimal timing for plant treatment. This algorithm could inspire future teams working on the spread of other organisms. The details of these tools is presented in the Software page.
We also developped an app, available as a stand-alone application or a webapp to facilitate the search of previous iGEM teams working on given topics. This tool could greatly help future iGEM teams in finding teams from previous editions and allow them to inspire themselves from their work to further develop their project or nurture their own. More information on our iGEM GitLab repository in the folder iGEM-SST.
Education documents
In the context of our education part, we created multiple documents and presentations to make synthetic biology and science in general accessible to everyone. Here are some protocols that can be used by other iGEM teams if they are conducting workshops with elementary school children to teach them the basics of biology (represent microbes with glitter, bacterial culture, strawberry DNA extraction, yeast fermentation, pH experimentation, making up and feeding a blob). By providing our supports, we hope that it will be used by future iGEM teams to continue raising awarness around the world. See more details in the Education page.
Wiki tutorial
The wiki is the most important part of iGEM, and editing can be stressful. However, the task does not have to be left only to Computer Science students. Anyone can learn how to change the police, the font, the text colour and to use GitLab. By following our tutorial, any team can have any one of their members do basic modifications to the pages! Download it here!
