Team:Rock Ridge Virginia/Design

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Bacteria mimic/Living vaccine project

• Idea

  Our living vaccine has three major components:

  • The Wolbachia surface protein (WSP), which will allow our bacteria to be transferred vertically (parent to offspring) by binding/interacting with the oocytes of the female insects and it also helps temper its immune reaction.
  • The Lyme bacteria Outer Surface protein (OspA), which specifically binds the TROSPA receptor in the gut of the tick and it is indispensable for the Lyme bacteria colonization. OspA will help our bacteria colonize the gut of the insect and in that way the Lyme bacteria will not be able to get established, therefore rendering it harmless.
  • A color indicator: GFP or RFP which will let scientist identify our "living vaccine" in the natural environment.

    Most current solutions to prevent insect born diseases are pesticides, or physical barriers for individuals that maybe in contact with those insects. It is almost a loosing battle since the insects quickly develop resistance to those pesticides. Our solution does not focus on the insects but on the pathogen itself. We believe that for a pathogen to be effective, it first needs to get established in the insect, our bacteria will simulate the mechanism by which those pathogens colonize the insect preventing the initial infection in the first place. Another advantage is that if the bacteria loses the vector it will not be able to survive inside the insect and it will get lost.

1. We used the Nucleotide Data Base from NCBI to find the OspA and WSP gene sequences.
2. Translate from Expasy was used to double, triple check that we have the right protein sequence. WSP is 2151 bp, and OspA is 2475 bp.
3. the sequences were then sent to Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) and Genscrip for production.

Design

By talking about your design work on this page, there is one medal criterion that you can attempt to meet, and one award that you can apply for. If your team is going for a gold medal by building a functional prototype, you should tell us what you did on this page. If you are going for the Applied Design award, you should also complete this page and tell us what you did.

Note

In order to be considered for the Best Applied Design award and/or the functional prototype gold medal criterion, you must fill out this page.

This is a prize for the team that has developed a synthetic biology product to solve a real world problem in the most elegant way. The students will have considered how well the product addresses the problem versus other potential solutions, how the product integrates or disrupts other products and processes, and how its lifecycle can more broadly impact our lives and environments in positive and negative ways.

If you are working on art and design as your main project, please join the art and design track. If you are integrating art and design into the core of your main project, please apply for the award by completing this page.