Integrated Practices

Our Work in the World
In September of 2016, the United Nations identified antibiotic resistance as one of the foremost threats to modern society. Antibiotic Resistance holds the potential to shape surgeries as well as common medical practices in an unsafe manner by causing potentially deadly diseases to spread within patients. Antibiotic resistance could cause the onset of plagues; the severity of which has not been seen on earth since the dawn of modern medicine. This resistance is creating a looming effect on the future of biomedical practice and society at large, yet it remains largely unknown to the majority of society. In a world where the general populace concerns itself more with violent, dramatic disasters rather than threats on a miniscule scale, we aim to inform as many people as possible while working to solve the problem of Antibiotic Resistance. Through our experiments, we hope to uncover one potential solution to this issue.

The World in Our Work
The continuous creation of new biotechnology methods has yielded a potential solution to this problem: CRISPR/Cas9. Although it has been known to be present in bacteria for decades, CRISPR/Cas9’s potential use in human patients has only recently been demonstrated. The first high-potential human trials began in China at the end of July of 2016. The true medicinal potential of which is still unknown, but its very existence is progress, and its study, in time, could yield many more advancements. Upon beginning this project, we knew that we wanted to do two things: to solve a major world problem, and to apply CRISPR in doing so. Due to its study being a major goal of ours and its multiple, fascinating uses, CRISPR is a prime example of how scientific progress is able to solve an array of biological problems facing society.