Team:British Columbia/Modeling
Modeling
Imidacloprid is a neurotoxin that acts on the central nervous system of insects by irreversibly blocking acetylcholine receptors. Because of this, it has been suggested that imidacloprid toxicity depends not just on the initial ingestion, but also on secondary biological effects that accumulate over time. Using a cumulative toxicity model proposed by Rondeau et al., our goal was to determine whether our engineered bacteria would be able to improve survival, both at individual and population levels. By incorporating the decay constants of our engineered enzymes, we were able to show that our engineered bacteria is able to slow down the accumulation of toxicity in bees.
UBC iGEM 2015