Team:TU-Delft/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 used for our project. We used S. delphini which had some close similarities with S. aureus. The antimicrobial peptides where chosen in such a way that they have high minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for humans and low for S. aureus.

The effect of antimicrobial peptides (both de-novo and natural) on humans were evaluated by testing their effects on COS 1 Kidney cells from Cercopithecus aethiops (African green monkey). These cells were used as they were easily accessible. The effects can be very well correlated to the effect of peptides on humans. 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