From 2009.igem.org

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Revision as of 09:50, 21 October 2009

About our project

Bacto-Bandage

Our goal is to create an E. coli strain, which inhibits Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) biofilm formation in wounds by producing RNA III-inhibiting-peptide (RIP).

S. aureus is one of the largest causes of hospital infections, each year infecting millions of people around the globe. S. aureus is normally commensal, but can create bacterial biofilms on implanted medical devices and in post-operational wounds. Biofilm is becoming increasingly hard to treat, as a result of growing resistance to many types of antibiotics.

By manipulating E. coli to express a synthetic RIP peptide tagged with an export signal, we hope to reach this goal. RIP has been shown to hinder the quorum-sensing processes essential for biofilm development in S. aureus, thereby making it harder for the bacteria to spread and cause infections. We also propose making a bandage that contains our engineered bacteria behind a semipermeable membrane, allowing only small peptides such as RIP to pass through, into the wound.

We hope to show that biological machines could be used to fight different kinds of bacterial infections intelligently, to contribute with our RIP and export-signal parts and by better characterization of the older parts we've used.

Our Project | Background for the project

About our team

University of Southern Denmark

SDU Denmark. From left to right: Ann, Mike, John, Helle, Martin, Anna, Julius, Kir, Marc and Anne.

We are eight students from the University of Southern Denmark, who shared a common wish to explore synthetic biology and decided to start the first iGEM team at our university.

We are from diverse backgrounds such as nano-bio-science, molecular biology and medicine.

Together with six advisors, we are spending the summer getting to grips with the up’s and down’s in synthetic biology, the lab, how to organize the project and everything in between.

Our Team | See what we're up to on our blog

What do you think?

Feedback

We would love to get as much feedback as possible, both on our project and other work as well. Feel free to write, criticize or just say hallo.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Oct. 21: Last minute panic updates are on the way :-) Expect some turbulence on the page for now.

Oct. 20: Brainstorm and team page updated.

Oct. 19: We made a sacrifice to the Gods. Hopefully this will gives us the last bit of luck for the competition.

Oct. 18: We're been working hard on characterizing our parts and now we're getting ready for the final wiki upgrade

Oct. 16: We now have a couple on the team - Helle and Mike <3 congratulations! (Anne and Marc have actually been a couple for 4 years Anna)

Oct. 10: Colony-PCR protocol is uploaded.

Oct. 3: Yes! We got a gold medal in Valencia's survery.

Oct. 1: Congratulation Anne! Happy Birthday.

Sep. 22: A lot of new info on the background page.

Sep. 16: We're featured in this months Perspektiv & Mening, a magazine at SDU.

Sep. 10: We got our 4-brick-part together. Wohu. Now we can start testing.

Aug. 26: Loading buffer on trail at our blog. And we are getting ready to insert our different bricks into a backbone, yeah.

Aug. 25: More profiles on our team page.

Aug. 20: We updated the team page with most of our advisors.

Aug. 19: Wohu! Anna has returned after a five week trip to Africa where she helped deliver babies in Kenya. Good to have you back! Also we wrote about our ligation troubles on our blog.

Aug. 17: We updated the wiki with more protocols, our diary and changed the layout a bit.

Aug. 14: Julius left us to study at University of North Carolina. We miss you already, Mr. Misty Forrest Dragon!

Aug. 11: Kir's birthday! Happy birthday!

Check out the other teams

Click here to see the other team wiki's

Be sure to check out all the other teams that are competing in this years iGEM.

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 <div id="leftcontent">
-=The Problem=
-S. aureus is one of the largest causes of hospital infections, each year infecting millions of people around the globe.
+<div class="teaser">About our project</div>
-S. aureus is normally commensal, but can create bacterial biofilm on implanted medical devices and in post-operational wounds.
+<div id="h1-bactobandage">
+=Bacto-Bandage=
+</div>
-Biofilm formation, combined with resistancy to antibiotics in a growing number of S. aureus strains, is making S. aureus increasingly hard to treat. New ways for combating these bacteria could be immensely important.
+Our goal is to create an ''E. coli'' strain, which inhibits ''Staphylococcus aureus'' (''S. aureus'') biofilm formation in wounds by producing RNA III-inhibiting-peptide (RIP).
-Here we have tried to create a biological machine, capable of stopping the bacterial signalling necessary for biofilm formation to proceed.
+''S. aureus'' is one of the largest causes of hospital infections, each year infecting millions of people around the globe. ''S. aureus'' is normally commensal, but can create bacterial biofilms on implanted medical devices and in post-operational wounds. Biofilm is becoming increasingly hard to treat, as a result of growing resistance to many types of antibiotics.
-Continue reading about our project.
+By manipulating ''E. coli'' to express a synthetic RIP peptide tagged with an export signal, we hope to reach this goal. RIP has been shown to hinder the quorum-sensing processes essential for biofilm development in ''S. aureus'', thereby making it harder for the bacteria to spread and cause infections. We also propose making a bandage that contains our engineered bacteria behind a semipermeable membrane, allowing only small peptides such as RIP to pass through, into the wound.
-Read more about S. aureus, biofilm formation, quorum-sensing and quorum-quenching.
+We hope to show that biological machines could be used to fight different kinds of bacterial infections intelligently, to contribute with our RIP and export-signal parts and by better characterization of the older parts we've used.
-=The Machine=
+[https://2009.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark/Project Our Project] | [https://2009.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark/Background Background for the project]
-(Picture of bandage-e-coli)
-We have created a simple biological machine that can inhibit biofilm formation, thereby making it easier to treat S. aureus.
+<div class="teaser">About our team</div>
-This was done by genetically engineering E. coli using the BioBrick standard. BioBricks are standardized gene parts and by using this standard, we have been able to profit from older parts and contribute with new parts for others to use in the future.
+<div id="h1-sdu">
+=University of Southern Denmark=
+</div>
-Our main achievement is the RNA III-inhibiting-peptide (RIP) part. In this project we show (for the first time), that it’s possible to express RIP in E. coli and that it can obstruct the quorum-sensing process necessary for biofilm formation in S. aureus.
+[[Image:SDU2009-igemteam.jpg|300px|thumb|right|SDU Denmark. From left to right: Ann, Mike, John, Helle, Martin, Anna, Julius, Kir, Marc and Anne.]]
-Continue reading about our project.
+We are eight students from the [http://www.sdu.dk University of Southern Denmark], who shared a common wish to explore synthetic biology and decided to start the first iGEM team at our university.
-Read more about our parts, and how we accomplished this project.
-=Implications=
-(Picture of Operation bandage)
-We propose making a bandage that contains our engineered bacteria behind a semipermeable membrane, allowing only small peptides such as RIP to pass through, into the wound.
-We have reason to hope, that this will weaken the biofilm, thereby making multiresistant bacteria easier to treat with conventional antibiotics.
-Also, our machine opens up for the possibility to combat infections more intelligently. A logical next step would be to couple other kinds of quorum-quenching molecules to our machine, together with different quorum-signaling receptors. This would allow for inhibition of only the bacteria that’s currently infecting the wound.
-Read more about the implications of our project.
-=About us=
-We are eight students from the University of Southern Denmark, who shared a common wish to explore synthetic biology and decided to start the first iGEM team at our university.
 We are from diverse backgrounds such as nano-bio-science, molecular biology and medicine.
@@ Line 59: / Line 42: @@
 Together with six advisors, we are spending the summer getting to grips with the up’s and down’s in synthetic biology, the lab, how to organize the project and everything in between.
-Our Team | See what we're up to on our blog
+[https://2009.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark/Team Our Team] | [http://igem.sdu.dk See what we're up to on our blog]

Team:SDU-Denmark