Built Nano-tough

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Built Nano-tough

• A presentation brought to you by
• Ben, Judy, Will
• Mentors
• Alvin and Jose

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Synthetic Spider Silk
Spider silk, also known as gossamer, has a
tensile strength stronger than steel and is much
lighter, making it very useful. The problem is it
is very difficult to raise enough spiders to
extract silk, so doing it with bacteria might be
easier.
E. coli could produce the protein (it has been
placed in transgenic goats) or maybe algae if we
wanted to have the cells spin it for us. Algae
naturally makes colonies so maybe that could be
engineered to specialize into a spinneret.
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Gene Therapy in Plants
-Plants have a passive immune system compared to
those of warm-blooded animals. -One method to
help cope with plant blights such as bacteria,
viruses and fungi would be to insert a sequence
of DNA coding antimicrobial substance Possible
Vectors -Ti Plasmid Agrobacterium
Tumafaciens -Viruses which infect plants ex.
Tobacco Mosaic Virus Possible Modifications to
the Vector -A feedback mechanism within the
vector so that proteins are not overproduced.
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Possible Nanotube Generation
The goal of this project is to utilize a
biological system to fabricate nanotubes. This
would address the current limitations of
nanoscale structure creation and attempt to make
nanotubes a more viable material for many
applications. As it turns out, this project
is made inherently infeasible by the toxicity of
carbon nanotubes in cells. Nanotubes based on
other bases will be considered, as will other
nanoscale structures.