Team:TU-Eindhoven/Mosquito
Mosquito borne diseases don’t have a real fitting solution yet. The current developments in gene drives might change this. Gene drives can spread specific genomes through whole populations faster and more efficient than in current modification strategies. See below how scaffold protein can function as a kill switch to control population size and possibly diminish the amount of plagues.
Mosquito borne diseases like malaria a real problem in this world. Especially in the poor population of this world, there are numerous diseases that can be spread by mosquitos. Examples are the well-known Malaria, Zika, Yellow Fever and Dengue. With the right treatment, most of this diseases are not deadly, but in a developing world like Africa, not all resources and expertise is available or affordable for a large group of people. So there is a problem with traditional vaccination for mosquito borne diseases .
A new emerging solution might be gene drives. Gene drives are genetic systems which can spread through whole populations by sexual reproduction. In a normal situation, genes have a 50% chance to be inherited to the offspring. Gene drives differ from this, because gene drives can accomplish inheritance percentages close to 100%. This is possible because the genome editing capability of the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Thus mosquito borne diseases might be eliminated using this gene drive technology. Because the lifespan of mosquito’s is around 2 months, the gene drive can spread to whole populations of mosquito’s in just several years, due to the exponential growth of the gene drive population. The possible solution of gene drives raises a lot of questions. The main questions are: Could this possible solution be harmful for the environment? What if a harmful genome is spread through the mosquito population because of a mistake or because of a mutation?
Our project can be integrated in the gene drive solution for mosquito borne diseases by adding the kill switch into the genome of the altered organism. This way a fusicoccin dependent kill switch is created. This kill switch will be present in every mosquito which carries the gene drive. In case a mutation or another irregularity occurs in a gene drive fusicoccin could be added, this will enable caspase 9 activation and hence apoptosis.
Our scaffold protein could control the klotho concentrations the following way. First sequences of our scaffold protein, the klotho protein, and transcription factors for the newly built in klotho protein which can be regulated with the scaffold need to be built into bacteria. These bacteria will possess a human cell coating called click coli (iGEM TU Eindhoven 2014). This coated bacteria will not be recognised by the human immune system. They will be placed near the human brain. When fusicoccin is added in the environment of the bacteria, klotho production is induced, thus increasing the klotho concentration in the human brain. This might reduce effects of Alzheimer.
