Team:Guanajuato Mx/Project

iGEM Guanajuato Mx

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

What’s the problem?

The state of Guanajuato is located between the 15 entities with more incidence of severe burns in Mexico. According to WHO (2016) the burns occur mainly in home, which are preventable. Beside that it estimates that every year a 265 000 deaths are report, and non-fatal burns are the main cause of morbidity, which are caused by sepsis produced by pathogenic microorganisms, the most common are Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus y Enterococcus faecalis (Moctezuma-Paz et al., 2015).
The traditional systems of health provide a treatment compose of antibiotic, analgesic and antihistamine medications which results inefficient, variable and expensive. An alternative is the use of transdermal patches of prolonged liberation, which objective is to supply (provide) medicine or metabolites of interest at a determined speed (Allevato, 2007).

Main purpose:

To develop a biopatch able to detect and defeat infections caused by pathogenic bacteria common in burns, designing a biosensor to detect Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Our proyect

Biosense: Development of biosensors and patches to kill pathogenic bacteria that produce skin infections.

Description

Skin infections are major health problem Guanajuato Mexico, mainly provoked by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Here, we will develop two biosensors using as chassis nonpathogenic bacteria. Escherichia coli K12 will be transformed with the genes required to detect Pseudomonas aeruginosa and also with the alginate lyase gene (ALYG), in tandem with a bacteriocin. The ALYG will have a signal peptide from Bacillus thuringiensis, which allow protein translocation in Escherichia coli. These molecules will destroy the biofilm and the bacterium. Also, a Nisin producer bacterium (Lactobacillus lactis) will be transformed with the genes required to detect Pseudomonas aeruginosa and with an additional copy of Nisin. Our objetive is to overexpress the bacteriocin to kill the pathogenic bacterium. Additionally, we will model the conditions to build a patch made of Poly(vinyl alcohol) and nitrocellulose containing the biosensors that will allow the molecule to diffuse through the membrane in order to kill the pathogenic bacteria.