Team:USTC
Project Description
Characterization of antibiotics concentration based on chemotaxis and interference(CACCI)
Better for public health and environment
In China and other developing countries, abusing antibiotics causes severe antibiotic substances contamination and antibiotic resistance issues. According to latest professional evaluation from Chinese Academy of Science(CAS), China used 162,000 tons of antibiotic substances for human(48%) and animal(52%) in 2013, which is tenfold usage of USA and antibiotic substances in high concentration can be detected from many river basins that may potentially harmful to public health and environment.
Therefore, this year, we USTC developed a novel, original and portable device, which is able to determine trace antibiotics concentration in natural water bodies. We called it CACCI(characterization of trace antibiotics concentration based on chemotaxis and interference).
We firstly construct an antibiotics sensing circuit with antibiotic sensible promoters, quorum sensing molecules and logic amplification parts to test the efficiency of our design. Genetic modification on bacteria including overexpression of exogenous porin or viroporin and inhibition of efflux system using CRISPR will be implemented to condense antibiotics in bacterial bodies.
Then we will establish our CACCI based on genetically engineered chemotaxis circuit and amplification part. Bacteria will be designed with a special transmembrane protein with rare amino acid so that bacteria can be put on a polymer membrane that is able to covalently bind to bacteria with alteration. Thus, slight membrane elastic deformation will be accurately detected by interference and we will use Newton Ring to read out the concentration of antibiotics in sample. Finally CACCI will be developed with a traditional dial and a friendly GUI available for personnel without much professional knowledge and complicated training.
With our CACCI, we hope, antibiotic contamination issue would be treated in specific methods.