Joseph Liszovics

Cyanobacteria are fast-emerging as effective chassis for the sustainable synthesis of organic compounds. They are currently being used to produce plastics, proteins, biofuels, and more. Cyanophages are cyanobacteria-infecting viruses that regulate cyanobacterial populations in nature. This makes them a promising vehicle for cyanobacterial engineering. To aid scientists and iGEM teams who work with cyanobacteria, this project aims to create a cyanophage toolkit for their use. Our project will create a “ghost phage” that can recognize and bind marine cyanobacteria. A minimal set of cyanophage genes will be assembled into a phagemid vector that can replicate in E. coli and produce the structural proteins of the phage. To allow our phage to be utilized to immobilize modified cyanobacteria, a biotin-tagged variant of the capsid will also be created. Further development of the phage toolkit will enable it to be used as a DNA delivery vehicle in cyanobacterial engineering.

2021 SUNY Oneonta iGEM Team’s project SNflaPs is an extension of Ca2LF, in which the goal was to develop a field deployable genetic testing system to detect the presence of the A2 allele of the beta casein (CSN2) gene. SNflaPs further explores the extent to which our method is effective in detecting single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Inspired by the needs of local farmers, the goal of this project is to demonstrate that a detection panel of SNP caused diseases is a feasible one. This is done by amplifying genomic DNA through recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) and employing a 5’ flap endonuclease (Flappase) that cleaves Holliday junctions created by designed oligonucleotides with flurophore tagged ends.