Team:UC Davis

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Overview

An estimated one in every 133 Americans suffer from an autoimmune disorder called celiac disease (14, 11). Celiac disease is a condition in which the small intestines are unable to digest gliadin, a protein present in gluten. When gliadin is consumed by an individual with celiac disease, the immune system responds by causing a range of side-effects, which may include abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea and vomiting (14). A friend of one of our teammates currently suffers from this illness, which prompted us to look into celiac disease as the focus of our project. Currently, the only accepted treatment for this disorder is adhering to a gluten-free diet (14, 12). This inspired us to design a probiotic organism that could survive and take residence in the stomach, where it would secrete an enzyme that can degrade gliadin. This would prevent gliadin from progressing through the small intestine and inducing immune system response.

This synthetically engineered organism should be able to satisfy at least two main criteria. First, it should be able to survive only in the stomach and, secondly, secrete an enzyme that can degrade gliadin.

Studies have shown that the enzyme, Prolyl-endoprotease is able to degrade gliadin at the pH level of the stomach (8). Prolyl-endoprotease is one of the most promising enzymes which being used in recent studies regarding celiac disease treatment.

Due to licensing restrictions, we have opted not to work with this protein.

We have decided to focus our summer project on building two key elements required for our desired organism. Therefore, our project has been split into two tasks:

  1. Produce an inducible secretion system
  2. Construct a biological pH sensor limiting this secretion system to the stomach

This pH system will be sensitive to the change in pH when the probiotic leaves the stomach. We are confident that our two systems can be built in time to present to the iGEM community.

[About Us] [Celiac Disease] [Current Treatment] [Our Approach] [pH Sensor] [pH Sensor Parts] [pH Promoters] [Secretion Parts]

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