Difference between revisions of "Team:Oxford/Experiments"
Weikongquee (Talk | contribs) |
Weikongquee (Talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 71: | Line 71: | ||
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: | 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: | ||
<ul> | <ul> | ||
| − | <li>Constant secretion of biofilm-degrading enzymes - degrading the biofilms of the pathogenic bacteria reduces their resistance towards antibiotics</li> | + | <li>Constant secretion of <strong>biofilm-degrading enzymes</strong> - degrading the biofilms of the pathogenic bacteria reduces their resistance towards antibiotics</li> |
| − | <li>Production and intracellular accumulation of enzymes that can kill both the pathogenic bacteria and our engineered microbial host upon release into the extracellular medium</li> | + | <li>Production and intracellular accumulation of enzymes that can <strong>kill both the pathogenic bacteria and our engineered microbial host</strong> upon release into the extracellular medium</li> |
| − | <li>A quorum sensing mechanism that triggers the release of the antibacterial enzymes in the presence of pathogenic bacteria</li> | + | <li>A <strong>quorum sensing mechanism</strong> that triggers the release of the antibacterial enzymes in the presence of pathogenic bacteria</li> |
</ul> | </ul> | ||
| + | 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. | ||
</p> | </p> | ||
<p> | <p> | ||
Revision as of 02:26, 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
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.