2012: French Froggies
A synthetic hormonal system for the vertebrate chassis Xenopus tropicalis
Building on a long-standing French fascination for frogs, we wanted to spread this enthusiasm to the world of synthetic biology by introducing a new, vertebrate chassis to the community: Xenopus tropicalis. This leap towards multicellular biological engineering required new tools, so we first developed a new set of frog compatible vectors, biobricked tissue specific promoters and a new technique to assemble them in a single shot. To benefit from tissue compartmentalisation, we created a synthetic, orthogonal hormonal system using the plant molecule auxin. We also investigated E. coli/Xenopus interfacing, effectively creating a synthetic ecosystem. We modelled our system at the organism scale, using a multi-level and multi-technique approach. Finally, working with whole animals during iGEM brought a load of difficult ethical questions regarding animal biotechnologies and experimentation. This led us to wonder: Are we a chassis?
For more infos, visit our WIKI and/or look at our POSTER.
Rewards
Gold Medal
Best Human Practices Award, Europe, Overgrad
Best Model Award, Europe, Overgrad
Advance to World Championship
The 2012 iGEM competition
In 2012, 250 team from 34 countries participated in a two-tiered competition. Regional Jamborees were held in October and only 71 teams advanced to the World Championship Jamboree that was held on the Massachussets Institute of Technology Campus in Cambridge, MA, USA from 3rd to 5th of November 2012. Full infos and results are available on the iGEM 2012 website.
