Difference between revisions of "Team:Oxford/Experiments"

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                         Due to constraints in time and resources, we focused our experimental efforts towards the development of proof-of-concepts for only the first two features.                      
 
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Revision as of 02:27, 10 November 2015

Experiments

Introduction

Our enzymatic approach to the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs) is centred on the design of a "pathogen killing" engineered microbial host containing three key features:

  • Constant secretion of biofilm-degrading enzymes - degrading the biofilms of the pathogenic bacteria reduces their resistance towards antibiotics
  • Production and intracellular accumulation of enzymes that can kill both the pathogenic bacteria and our engineered microbial host upon release into the extracellular medium
  • A quorum sensing mechanism that triggers the release of the antibacterial enzymes in the presence of pathogenic bacteria

Due to constraints in time and resources, we focused our experimental efforts towards the development of proof-of-concepts for only the first two features.

Through our experimental work with secretion assays, biofilm assays, and cell-killing assays we were able to obtain preliminary data suggesting that the BioBrick parts which we designed to allow our microbial host to produce the relevant biofilm-degrading enzymes and bacteria-killing enzymes are indeed able to function as expected individually.