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| <h3>Our Project</h3> | | <h3>Our Project</h3> |
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- | Bacteriophage infection represents a major problem in the industry and
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- | research fields. The idea of being able to contend at a population
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- | level with such infections is our main motivation for the development
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- | of this years´ project (the main motivation for the development of our
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- | project this year). We plan to modify an Escherichia coli phage for
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- | the delivery of (so it can deliver) (in order to deliver) genetic
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- | material codifying a construction in defense against other phages
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- | taking advantage of some of the properties they can present.
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- | The purpose of this construction is that a bacterial population can
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- | manage to fight back the spreading of some phage by triggering on
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- | (unleashing) a cellular death response when a cell encounters an
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- | specific component of the phage. Such response will be faster than the
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- | formation process of viral particles in order to prevent (preventing)
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- | the death of the bacterial population. This population resistance can
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- | be seen as a sort of "vaccine" that will hold back the process of
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- | infection.
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- | The design of the delivery system includes the use the P4 phage and
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- | its auxiliary genes present in the P2 helper phage. In the case of the
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- | "vaccine" construct, the cellular death response will be induced by
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- | the presence of T3 or T7 RNA polymerases which will also (the same
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- | ones that will) turn on the transcription of toxines used for the
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- | degradation of DNA and RNA to stop the phage´s genetic material from
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- | assembling and scattering in the environment. Furthermore, we will
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- | implement a stochastic population model based on the basic properties
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- | of the bacterial cells and the phages such as movement, reproduction,
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- | etc., that will allow us to simulate the infection processes and
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- | quantify the efficiency of our system. A possible extensión of the
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- | system includes the expansion of an AHL signal through the quorum
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- | sensing system of Vibrio fischeri in which the population will be
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- | "warned" to prepare against the viral infection in the presence of T3
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- | or T7.
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