Team:Imperial College/Backbone Library

BASIC_SEVA
Backbone Library

Whilst our validation experiments demonstrate that our software works, it was then desirable to demonstrate utility by showing how it could be used for a real synthetic biology project.

For this part of the project we chose to assemble a set of standardised BASIC backbones conforming to the Standard European Vector Architecture (SEVA). We chose to build these standard backbones for a number of reasons: time constraints and lab space constraints imposed by SARS-CoV2 made a more ambitious project unfeasible; the BASIC_SEVA parts were already available to us from the Baldwin lab; it would provide a foundational development to the BASIC standard; and finally would allow us to demonstrate the speed and ease of carrying out a full factorial build from multiple parts using SOAP-Lab when compared to by hand. Finally, we believe BASIC has a number of key attributes making it a more powerful and versatile method of cloning than those widely adopted in synthetic biology – such as single tier organisation, idempotency, parallel assembly, and the ability to assemble both operons and multiple transcriptional units.

The BASIC_SEVA backbones we have assembled are shown in the illustration to the right.

Illustration of the BASIC SEVA backbone library. The different parts used in the assembly are listed. Each individual part is illustrated in a different color.