Team:Paris Bettencourt
From 2013.igem.org
We are testing new weapons for the global war against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTb), a pathogen that infects nearly 2 billion people. Our 4 synergistic projects aim to help in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of tuberculosis. 1) We are reproducing an essential MTb metabolic pathway in E. coli, where it can be easily and safely targeted in a drug screen. 2) We are building a phage-based biosensor to allow the rapid diagnosis specifically drug-resistant MTb strains. 3) We are constructing a mycobacteriophage to detect and counterselect drug-resistant Mtb in the environment. 4) We are programming E. coli to follow MTb into human macrophages and saturate it with bacteriolytic enzymes. We want to vanquish tuberculosis and build a TB-free world.
FIGHT TUBERCULOSIS WITH MODERN WEAPONS
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) that affects nearly two billion people around the world. On this website we present four new ways to use the power of synthetic biology in the fight against TB.
A biosensor that detects the presence of sequence specific antibiotic resistance genes.
A safe and specific high-throughput drug screening method that targets essential mycobacterial metabolic proteins.
A phage system with low fitness cost producing sRNA, which inhibit the synthesis of antibiotic resistance proteins.
Infiltrate macrophages with an E.coli producing TDMH, an enzyme that will lyse the Mycobacteria cell wall.
Results page