USNA visit to the Pentagon
The team was extremely fortunate to meet at the Pentagon with representatives of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), as well as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in Washington, D.C. There they gave a
short presentation about the danger of conotoxin, as well as our efforts to combat the danger. Additionally, we conducted our work at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with funding from DTRA. These organizations ensured we kept our focus on the defensive, medical nature of our project. In coming years we hope to test the effectiveness of the sense and respond mechanism in E. coli in the lab with actual conotoxin. The extreme toxicity of conotoxin makes testing hazardous, however our unique relationship with NRL allows us access to resources which reduce the danger sufficiently in order to conduct future lab testing. As we integrate our sense and respond mechanism into a simulated human microbiome, we hope to predict the effectiveness of the sense and respond mechanism in the human environment.
