Difference between revisions of "Team:SDU-Denmark"

Start saving money and animals

P.A.S.T. (Peptide Aptamer Screening using Two-Hybrid System) is the future

The nowadays production methods of antibodies are not only time-consuming and costly but are at the expense of animal lives. Antibodies have many applications in research, diagnostics, and show great promise in treatment of cancer. But the advancement is held back due to the expensive and tiresome production. Therefore we propose an alternative to antibodies; peptide aptamers – produced in Escherichia coli (E. coli). The variable loop of the peptide aptamer is generated through a random nucleotide library and held together by an enzymatic inactive version of human Thioredoxin (hThx) as a scaffold protein. We are using the bacterial two-hybrid system to screen for functioning peptide aptamers that are able to bind our chosen target proteins (‘antigens’). In this model bacteria expressing a functioning peptide aptamer will express Red Fluorescent Protein (RFP), which enables us to isolate them. To challenge the antibody tradition, we are also proposing a production model.