Team:Lubbock TTU
Balance is Key
Experience has most likely reinforced the idea that balance is key to health, happiness, and well-being. There are lessons to be learned depending on how we apply an understanding of balance to the nature of the process in question. Regarding the human body, scientists have made significant progress in understanding the balance of interactions in biochemical and physiological systems ever since Robert Hooke discovered the first cell in 1665. The vast complexity of interactions in the body between the cells and tissues have made studying how these systems work difficult, yet rewarding. When these interactions fall out of balance, the outcome can be deleterious for the healthy progress of other bodily functions. In some cases, an excess or lack of certain biomolecules can result in medical conditions. One such case is evident and problematic in patients that suffer from chronic wounds. This year, our team seeks a treatment to help restore balance to chronic wounds in hopes of reducing the healing time for patients.
"All things in moderation" - Aristotle
The Art of Balance
Biochemical pathways play a sophisticated balancing act within cells and the surrounding environment to maintain the proper emergent functionality of a biological system or process. For example, wound healing is generally categorized into four stages, hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling: these are emergent processes that occur in response to an injury and encompass a vast collection of interactions among proteins, cells, and biological mediators. The healthy progression of each stage is dependent on balanced interactions of these mediators and structural components. In the inflammation stage, growth factors are released to recruit cells that remove debris and help rebuild the matrix to support tissue growth. Our team focused on restoring balance by mitigating the consequences associated with an excess build-up of an enzyme which breaks down matrix proteins and growth factors. These enzymes are known as matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and play a pivotal role in healthy wound healing. In chronic wounds, MMPs are present in surplus amounts and excessively degrade valuable bioactive molecules and structural proteins necessary for progressing past the inflammation stage.
Restoring Balance
In order for a chronic wound to pass the inflammation phase, medical treatments must maintain a certain degree of balance to remain effective. The excess build-up of wound site MMPs can be moderated and controlled by a protease inhibitor. Synthetic biology aims to establish more modular environments to solve problems with engineering principles. Our team sought a modular platform by using fusion proteins to attach therapeutic proteins, such as the protease inhibitor, to a collagen scaffold wound dressing. The collagen scaffold will expose different combinations of growth factors and protease inhibitors to a chronic wound. We focused on restoring balance within chronic wounds by with working with platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) and Aprotinin, a trypsin protease inhibitor. In the future, we hope to explore the effects of many other fusion proteins.
About Us
The Lubbock_TTU Team is part of a student organization at Texas Tech University known as iGEM Raiders. Our mission is to expose the university and community to synthetic biology through undergraduate initiative and involvement in the International Genetically Engineering Machine (iGEM) Competition.
This year, the iGEM Raiders team is composed of 14 dedicated undergraduate and graduate students with backgrounds in microbiology, animal science, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, mathematics, physics, and chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering. The diversity within our team enables the iGEM Raiders to tackle novel project ideas.
