Team:Harvard BioDesign/Project
BactoGrip
About our project
Our team is engineering E. coli to bind to colon cancer cells through the use of their type I pili, which are hair-like appendages
that have an adhesive domain. Naturally, the strains in E. coli that produce pili bind to alpha-D-mannose, which can cause urinary tract infections.
However, our team is altering a non-harmful strain to produce pili using a modified Fim gene in order to localize the bacteria as a tool. For treatment of cancer,
once the bacteria are localized on the cells, the next step is to make them