Evolutionary Stability

The Evolutionary Stability (EvoStab) project studies the stability of genetic devices (DNA sequences) over time. These devices normally create a “burden” on cells. Overtime, cells will mutate to reduce their burden. As this happens, cells with reduced burden grow more quickly, which is bad for us researchers. As synthetic biologist, our whole goal is to reprogram cells to perform functions or tasks that they don’t normally perform. However, those functions create burden, and thus, overtime, the cells will evolve to get rid of that function. Hence, the need to study “evolutionary stability”. The EvoStab project studies burden, mutation rates, and how to make genetic devices more stable (less prone to mutating and being lost in the population) over time.

This project was initiated by the 2015 iGEM team, and has continued as a stream research project since then.

Our active subprojects:

Fluctuation tests. Fluctuation tests determine the mutation rate of a given hypermutable site that enables growth on selective agar. It is a 4-day procedure consisting of streaking out a frozen glycerol stock, growing overnight cultures, plating, and counting the number of isolated colonies. The gathered mutation rates are displayed on a Forest Plot to determine trends between different hypermutable sites.

EFM Calculator 2.0. The Evolutionary Failure Mode (EFM) Calculator is a tool developed by the Barrick Lab that predicts the genetic stability and hypermutable sites of a given genetic device. We are using data from our fluctuation tests to improve the accuracy of the EFM calculator and make the tool more accessible for a wider audience. Test it out here! 

EFM Calculator 3.0. The Evolutionary Failure Mode (EFM 1.0) Calculator is a tool developed by the Barrick Lab that predicts the genetic stability and hypermutable sites of a given genetic device. The EFM 3.0 focuses on expanding the data set from EFM 2.0 to include more single sequence repeats (SSRs) to expand mutational data for these hotspots.