Contents of this Article
Workflows and Tools
TeselaGen assists you in automating processes with iterative steps to update your Lab Inventory Management System automatically with the input reagents or materials used and by adding the outputs of those reactions on existing samples, or even creating new plates or tubes with your new output materials. This is carried out through workflow definitions, where you describe the steps followed in your protocol as a series of tasks to accomplish, which we call Tools. You can find all tools under the Tool library in the left side panel.
Constant and Variable Part Files Tool
This tool allows you to test multiple variable amino acid components in a protein sequence cloned on a constant expression vector. It takes two input files and creates the corresponding designs for the assembly of your variants. In this hands-on, we will create a series of designs to test a variable region.
Building my Input Files
To run this tool, we need to upload two different input files: one for the expression vector and one for all of the variant parts we want to test. Both files can either contain new biological entities or parts that are already registered in our inventory (if that is the case, make sure to indicate exactly the same information on the CSV file as it's registered in your library, so TeselaGen's system recognizes it as the same entity).
Now, let's see what to include in our files:
π File 1: Invariant Expression Vector
The first file we need is one containing the information about our invariant expression vector. This CSV file will contain only one row with at least the name and DNA sequence of our backbone; optionally, we can add more information (aliases, tags, description, indicate if it's a linear or a circular sequence, etc).
If you are using a circular sequence, you must make sure that the linear sequence you provided in the file ends just where the variable amino acid part will be inserted.
π File 2: Variable Amino Acid Sequences
For the second file, we can include as many rows as variable amino acid sequences we want to test.
name, aa sequence, name assigned, and other optional descriptors (same considerations for the registry)
For the variable region, it is recommended to have a fragment size of at least 5-7 amino acids. If your sequence is shorter, a good practice would be to frame it with a section of the invariant part.
π¨NOTE: Ensure that the backbone sequence is uploaded as a nucleotide sequence and the variable regions are uploaded as amino acid sequences.
Creating the Designs
Once our input files are set up, let's start building the designs. First, we'll go to the Designs library on the Molecular Biology Toolkit, click on "Import from external DB", and select the "Constant and Variable part files".
A pop-up window will appear, where we can upload our CSV files and select a name for our design. In here, we are uploading our files. Notice that placing the cursor over the info icon will display information about how the file needs to be structured.
After hitting "search" we will select our data and click on "Import:
The next window will show us if there are any duplicated sequences for us to select which one(s) to import:
After clicking on Submit the design will be generated. Let's see the result:
In here, we can see a combinatorial design where the vector is constant and the amino acid sequences are the variable regions. By default, it assigns a Direct Synthesis to all parts as a Forced Assembly Strategy, as well as a Direct Synthesis Firewall for each bin. Additionally, Golden Gate will automatically be selected as the Assembly method wth the BsaI enzyme, but it can be modified. If we double-click one of the variable parts, we will see something like this:
The parts we introduced as amino acid sequences are now DNA Parts (available in that library). As we can verify on the library, new DNA Parts will be created (if they were not previously registered in the LIMS). However, no Amino Acid Sequences or parts will be created to avoid overloading the library, but they can be created from the OVE.
TeselaGen automatically does a reverse translation to the amino acid sequences to obtain the corresponding DNA sequence.
π¨NOTE: To do the reverse translation, TeselaGen uses a default high abundance human codon map. If you want to use a different one, you can edit it on the node-red integration.