Correction: Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

The Acknowledgments contain several errors in the “2014 iGEM Interlab Study Contributors” section. In the “ETH_Zurich” subsection, the correct spelling of “Verena Jagger” is “Verena Jäggin”. In the “HUST-China” subsection, the correct spelling of “Yunjun Yang” is “Yunjun Yan”. In the “Leicester” subsection, the name “Ross Campbell” should be listed after “Richard Badge”. In the “Marburg” subsection, the name “Daniel F. Hurtgen” should be listed after “Matthias Franz”

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices