Team:TU-Delft/Safety

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Revision as of 09:21, 3 October 2013

Safety

The MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) problem is our inspiration for this project. This project will focus on killing the Staphylococcus species by antimicrobial peptides synthesized in E. coli.

As we work in the lab which has only BSL-1 permit we did intense literature study to find closely related organisms of same genera other than S. aureus that can be used for our project. We used S. delphini which had some close similarities with S. aureus to test our peptides and have a prediction of their possible effect on the MRSA . The antimicrobial peptides where chosen in such a way that they have high minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for humans and low for S. aureus.

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-The MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) problem is our inspiration for this project. This project will focus on killing Staphylococcus species with the use of antimicrobial peptides expressed in <i>E. coli</i>.
+The MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i>) problem is our inspiration for this project. This project will focus on killing the Staphylococcus species by antimicrobial peptides synthesized in <i>E. coli.</i>
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-As working with MRSA requires a BSL-2 permit, and the lab in which we work has a BSL-1 permit, we did an intense literature study to find closely related organisms of same genera other than <i>S. aureus</i>. We chose <i>S. delphini</i> which has close similarities to <i>S. aureus</i>. <i>S. delphini</i> is not known as being infectious to humans.
+As we work in the lab which has only BSL-1 permit we did intense literature study to find closely related organisms of same genera other than <i>S. aureus</i> that can be used for our project. We used <i>S. delphini</i> which had some close similarities with <i>S. aureus</i> to test our peptides and have a prediction of their possible effect on the MRSA . The antimicrobial peptides where chosen in such a way that they have high minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for humans and low for <i>S. aureus</i>.
-The antimicrobial peptides where chosen in such a way that they have minimum toxicity to humans and a low minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for <i>S. aureus</i>.
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-The effect of antimicrobial peptides (both de-novo and natural) on humans were evaluated by testing their effects on COS 1 Kidney cells from <i>Cercopithecus aethiops</i> (African green monkey). These cells were used as they not infectious or dangers to humans. The effects can be very well correlated to the effect of peptides on humans because of their shared simian nature.
-In order to cater to guidelines of releasing of  GMO to the environment, we added a kill switch that is controlled by a timer. This will allow the self destruction of the cells after the desired effects are attained
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