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Revision as of 19:13, 16 July 2013
QGEM 2013 PRESENTS:
Using foot odour in the fight against malaria
The drone of the mosquito is a common sound. On camping trips it serves as a herald of itchy swells and signals that it is indeed time to break out the bug spray. In many parts of the world however, this sound means something completely different. It signals the presence of a vector for diseases such as malaria, west nile and dengue fever. Mosquitoes are responsible for the widespread of these sicknesses, resulting in 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 alone, 660,000 of which resulted in deaths.
The idea
To defend against malaria, we've devised a solution in two parts.
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Repel.
First, we plan to eliminate foot odor with engineered bacteria and replace it with natural mosquito repellants. This will make it more difficult for mosquitoes to find their hosts, without the risk of the insects developing resistance.-
Attract.
Second, we intend to devise a mosquito trap where bacteria will synthesize the chemicals found in foot and body odour. Once the mosquitoes are trapped, we aim to resolve further disease by infecting the mosquitoes to sterilize, control, or destroy the vectors.
The basis of our project is the recent finding that mosquitoes, particular diseased individuals, rely very heavily on human scent to find their prey. Particularly, products found in sweat, including isovaleric and propanoic acid. Thus by eliminating these volatile producing chemicals, it would be possible to prevent the mosquito from finding humans. This would decrease the incidents of mosquito bites and in turn lower the infection rate of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. To effectively repel mosquitoes, the first step would be to construct a pathway of enzymes that would degrade and eliminate the mosquito-attracting substances on the human body. This would be done by engineering a bacteria to release these enzymes onto the skin. This method of delivery also allows us to perform other tasks as well, including the secretion of mosquito-repelling chemicals to further discourage these insect vectors from biting.
On the other hand, it occurred to us that it would also be possible to create a synthetic trap, composed of a bacteria secreting odourous chemicals that the mosquitoes would be attracted to. This mechanism could act as a delivery system for mosquito eliminating substances. Better yet, there is recent research investigating the possibility of sterilizing mosquitoes. This would prevent the propagation of progeny and thus keep entire populations of mosquito in controlled numbers. -
A huge thanks to our sponsors:
