Dan Tarjan tells me about two new foundational parts the University of Virginia built (that "don't cater to any category or judging criteria or whatever" - those Mavericks!) :

* BioBrick placeholders - "BioBrick-compatible restriction sites flanked by the standard BioBrick prefix and suffix. Next time you go to build a gene but you're not sure which RBS to use, go ahead and put in a BioBrick Placeholder to reserve a spot for that RBS. Later, after you've amplified your construct, you can insert any RBS you'd like."

* Genetic Attenuators - "Terminators are never 100% efficient, meaning that not all polymerases will disengage from the strand they are operating on. This phenomenon can be exploited to create inefficient terminators we call Genetic Attentuators. Inserting a Genetic Attenuator between two genes will result in different levels of two transcripts. The levels of polycistronic mRNA will be lower than the levels of mRNA corresponding to only the upstream gene. How much lower depends on the efficiency of the attenuator."

Learn more at 2008.igem.org/Team:Virginia