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Revision as of 19:01, 9 October 2018
Description
Description
Our focus this year is fighting bed bugs, worldwide invasive pests, that are invading homes and biting humans for their blood. These tiny bugs became harmful from the moment humans made caves their homes, as the original hosts of bed bugs were bats. Nowadays humans don’t live in caves, but this temporary troglodyte dwelling came with a cost: fighting against an insect addicted to human blood. While their bite usually doesn’t transmit any disease, it still induces serious dermatological and allergy issues.
The breaking bugs project aims to provide a human-friendly, and efficient solution to eliminate bed bugs. The plan is to elaborate an attractive lethal trap. We will use biosynthesized pheromones as a chemical lure to attract the bugs into the trap and infect them with Beauveria bassiana (an entomopathogenic fungus), causing a fatal epidemic among the sheltered colonies.
The problem ?
An alternative weaponry must be found to replace the harmful and expensive traditional insecticides, that is now nearly useless against bed bugs. Because of the excessive use of insecticides, the tiny bugs developed multiple resistance mechanisms (exoskeleton thickening and enhanced metabolic pathways to neutralize toxic chemicals). As a result, pest control companies are obliged to increase the insecticides' doses.
The plan ?
First subunit
To elaborate our trap, we are going to use the biological properties of an entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana. It was first used as a way to fight against insects in agriculture in Canada, and later on, all over the world. The fungus can penetrate bed bug's exoskeleton: the cuticle. Firstly, the spore attaches to the cuticle and germs. Secondly, the spore breaks down a first fatty acids layer using the lipase protein. The fungus keeps going and breaks the second layer: the chitin, using the chitinase protein. Once inside the insect's hemolymph, the fungus feeds, multiplies, and releases toxins, causing its death. The whole process takes about 12 days. Our objective is to enhance the fungus to improve its killing efficiency and speed. We want to reduce the lethal doses and kill the bed bugs in fewer days.
Inspiration
We used some papers to elaborate our plan