Measurements Overview
One trend we noticed was that the chlamy transformed with Psr1 only outperformed untransformed chlamy in TAP media, which had the highest phosphate concentrations of any of the media we used for the assays, as shown in this bar graph. We speculate that at lower levels of phosphate, untransformed chlamy may turn on expression of its own Psr1 gene, causing it to uptake as much phosphate as our transformed chlamy.
Our achievements:
- We successfully assembled 3 simple and 8 new composite parts.
- We successfully electroporated the Level 2 plasmids into chlamy.
- We successfully expressed Psr1-nanoLuc, and found that it caused increased phosphate uptake in TAP media.
- Our Ptc amiRNA part appears to cause decreased expression of Ptc.
Roadblocks:
- We have not been able to detect expression of nosZ-mCherry.
- Chlamy transformed with De-Slimer do not display increased uptake of nitrate or phosphate compared to untransformed controls.
- Chlamy transformed with De-Slimer appear to grow more slowly than untransformed chlamy.
Future directions:
- We would like to see if expressing only nitrate or phosphate pathway genes separately improves nutrient rates.
- Instead of looking at nitrate uptake, we would like to see if expression of nosZ causes decreased nitrous oxide production.
- We would like to mimic wastewater treatment plant conditions more closely to see how that effects performance of our chlamy transformed with De-Sliimer.
For more details please see our Resultspage.