Description

Bacto-Aid

Our project faces the growing problems of both plastic pollution and the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Bacto-Aid is a sustainable concept with bacteria aiding us. We focused on producing a bandage, which consists of recombinant spider silk integrated with antimicrobial peptides, making it preventive towards infections. The plastic we attach the spider silk to is biodegradable and made in the lab as well.

The spider silk is chosen due to its angiogenic properties and proliferative effect on keratinocytes (skin cells). We tried to synthesize the silk with the help of the protocols provided by the 2015 iGEM team from UCLA. We would also have liked to make hybrid silk, which consists of bacteriocins and spider silk with the same method.

The bacteriocins are the antimicrobial peptides in our hybrid silk. Recent resistance development in bacteria has been towards traditional antibiotics. The use of bacteriocins could shift some of the resistance pressure. They work bactericidal through pore formation and interference with intracellular enzymatic reactions of specific target bacteria. We, and the iGEM team of Stockholm, did a MIC-test on our bacteriocins effect on resistant bacteria and they were quite effective.

The biodegradable plastic (PHB) is a synthezised poly-β-hydroxy butyrate polymer that is non-toxic and has a high oxygen-permeability JAMBUNATHAN, P. & ZHANG, K. C. 2016. Engineered biosynthesis of biodegradable polymers. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology, 43, 1037-1058.<. By introducing a PHB secretion system into an E. coli plasmid we can increase the yield from existing plastic producing BioBricks. We have made enough PHB to 3D print.

This project was chosen due to the interest in synthetic spider silk. An article of interest that concluded antimicrobial effect of fused synthetic spider silk to human defenses became the pillar of our project Gomes, Silvia C, Isabel B Leonor, Joao F Mano, Rui L Reis og David L Kaplan (2011). “Antimicrobial functionalized gene- tically engineered spider silk.” eng. I: Bio- materials 32.18, s. 4255–4266. issn: 1878- 5905<. The idea of making PHB a part of our project evolved from the desire to have an influence on solving the growing problem of plastic pollution. Bacto-Aid was the perfect project to make our two wishes come to life.

In the field of science, scientific reproduction is one of the most important aspects when confirming a hypothesis or theory. iGEM follows this specific scientific virtue by making it a part of both the bronze and gold criteria: the demands imply working with other team’s work. We took it further trying to reproduce parts of earlier iGEM team’s work: the 2015 UCLA team, the 2012 Tokyo Tech team, the 2014 Imperial College London and the 2015 Standford Brown team.