Modifying to innovate

Introduction

Our questionning through the Integrated Human practice and the sections, made our project evolved from what it was originally from. we try to resume here all the modification we brought to our project after each critical encounter we made

Originally our project was about to create a system able to detect pesticides in the guts of Apis mellifera, and protect them from any harms, in E. coli. However after our first encounter with Mr. Philippe Lecompte, president of the bees biodiversity network, we decided to oriented our project to the detection of pathogens. We decided to focus on one of the worst pathogens currently in action in the US, P. larvae. Our idea was to detect the siderophore (little molecule that bounds strongly Fe2+ in the media. As bacteria aren't able to produce their own iron, they have to get it from their surrounding environnement) of the bacteria with a modified B. subtilis.

We choose B. subtilis as it is a Gramm + bacteria very similar to P. larvae. The idea was to insert the receptors specific to the siderophore of P. larvae into our B. subtilis (after deleting its own siderophore receptors). Inside of the bees guts, our "Bee subtilis" would be able to grow only in the presence of P. larvae (as "Bee subtilis" needs the siderophore of P. larvae to grow).