Title: Construction of a Mycobacterium smegmatis bioengineering toolkit for therapeutic and environmental applications
Department: Biology
Description: Currently, bioengineers and synthetic biologists focus their research on only a few well-understood bacterial species, namely, E. coli and B. subtilis, species that thrive only in a few, very specific environments. There is a huge need to develop additional model systems. Mycobacterium smegmatis is a non-pathogenic species of the Mycobacterium genus (members include M. tuberculosis and M. leprae). Fast-growing, ubiquitous in soil, M. smegmatis has the potential to be a successful host for the emerging field of synthetic biology with both clinical (therapeutics) and environmental (bioremediation) applications. However, a first necessary step is to identify and analyze M. smegmatis promoters (regulatory elements that control gene expression). This research project will identify, clone, and characterize M. smegmatis promoters and create a well-characterized promoter library that will allow future investigators to use M. smegmatis as a new synthetic biology host for developing therapeutics for mycobacterial disease and bioremediation.
Hometown: Shanghai, China
Advisor: Margaret Saha
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