Difference between revisions of "Team:Montpellier/Description"

 
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        <title>Description</title>
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<h1>Description</h1>
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<p>Tell us about your project, describe what moves you and why this is something important for your team.</p>
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<caption>Spermicidal molecules</caption>
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      <th>Name</th>
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      <th>Type of molecule</th>
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      <th>Origin</th>
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      <td>Nisin</td>
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      <td>Lantipeptid</td>
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      <td>Lactococcus lactis</td>
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      <td>Lacticin 3147</td>
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      <td>Lantipeptid</td>
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      <td>Lactococcus lactis</td>
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      <td>Subtilosin A</td>
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      <td>Sactipeptid</td>
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      <td>Bacillus subtilis</td>
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      <td>Magainin II</td>
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      <td>Magainin</td>
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      <td>Xenopus laevis</td>
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      <td>LL37</td>
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      <td>Cathelicidin antimicrobial peptid</td>
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      <td>Homo sapiens</td>
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      <td>YLP20</td>
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      <td>Anti bodies</td>
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      <td>Homo sapiens</td>
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      <td>AS16</td>
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      <td>Anti bodies</td>
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      <td>Homo sapiens</td>
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<h3>What should this page contain?</h3>
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<ul>
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<li> A clear and concise description of your project.</li>
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<li>A detailed explanation of why your team chose to work on this particular project.</li>
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<li>References and sources to document your research.</li>
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<center><img class="description" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/a/ac/T--Montpellier--projet_description_grand_2_mtp.svg"/></center>
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<h3>Inspiration</h3>
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<p>See how other teams have described and presented their projects: </p>
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<section>
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<li><a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Imperial_College/Description">2016 Imperial College</a></li>
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<p><figcaption><span class="underline">Figure 1:</span> Scheme of the different steps of the Vagineering project.</figcaption></p>
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<li><a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Wageningen_UR/Description">2016 Wageningen UR</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:UC_Davis/Project_Overview"> 2014 UC Davis</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:SYSU-Software/Overview">2014 SYSU Software</a></li>
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<p>Modern hormonal contraceptive methods have been revolutionary for women in developed countries; however, they still exhibit a variety of challenges. Developing countries lack consistent access, hormonal contraceptives can produce harmful environmental effects, and some women are unable to use them due to health problems. </p>
  
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<p>The Vagineering project looks to solve these issues with a novel, non-hormonal method. The goal is to create a lasting contraceptive using only bacteria, which can later be reversed by engineering the strain with a kill-switch. </p>
  
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<p>Our team aims to engineer <i>Lactobacillus jensenii</i>, a bacterium from the vaginal flora, to produce two categories of proteins to prevent unintentional pregnancy. The first category is antimicrobial peptides (AMP). Indeed some AMPs showed significant inhibition of sperm motility effect. The second category is antisperm antibody (ASA). ASA were found in infertile human couples and have been identified. The goal of the project is to prove that our gram positive bacteria model <i>Bacillus subtilis</i> and <i>Lactobacillus jensenii</i> are able to produce such spermicidal molecules. </p>
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<h3>Advice on writing your Project Description</h3>
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We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be concise, accurate, and unambiguous in your achievements.
 
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This non-hormonal contraception would be a long term contraception which takes place directly in the vagina where the vaginal microbiota would secrete spermicide <i>in situ</i> (Figure 2). It would be cheaper way of contraception, which is crucial for developing countries. Moreover this new kind of contraception would help to avoid some of the disadvantages of other contraceptives. This contraceptive would be reversible with kill-switches.</p></div>
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    <div class="element"><br><br><img class="vagin" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/b/b5/T--Montpellier--uterussperma_mtp.png"><p><figcaption><span class="underline">Figure 2:</span> Scheme of the action of the modifed bacteria in the vagina.</figcaption></p></div>
 
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<h3>References</h3>
 
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<p>iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you thought about your project and what works inspired you.</p>
 
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<p>Additionally, our project contains a model study to help the characterization of the strain. This bioinformatic approach lead us to the finding and sequence design of promoters for <i>L. jensenii</i>.
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A sperm motility analysis was conducted to determine an efficient way to measure the motility of sperm depending on spermicidal molecules in their environment.
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Finally, our studies of this strain have produced a toolbox that will help other teams to further engineer this less-characterized bacterium. This toolbox contains protocols to grow and transform <i>L. jensenii</i> as long with our constructs and plasmids that we used during our work.</p>
  
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<p><figcaption><span class="underline">Figure 3:</span> Objectives of our Human Practices studies.</figcaption></p>
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<p>As part of our human practices (Figure 3) we conducted a survey that lead us to create a comic book to popularize and explain the subjects of contraception and the vagina. Different events for science popularization were created in order to make the subject better known.</p>
  
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{{Montpellier/Footer}}

Latest revision as of 21:55, 16 October 2018

Description

Figure 1: Scheme of the different steps of the Vagineering project.



Modern hormonal contraceptive methods have been revolutionary for women in developed countries; however, they still exhibit a variety of challenges. Developing countries lack consistent access, hormonal contraceptives can produce harmful environmental effects, and some women are unable to use them due to health problems.

The Vagineering project looks to solve these issues with a novel, non-hormonal method. The goal is to create a lasting contraceptive using only bacteria, which can later be reversed by engineering the strain with a kill-switch.

Our team aims to engineer Lactobacillus jensenii, a bacterium from the vaginal flora, to produce two categories of proteins to prevent unintentional pregnancy. The first category is antimicrobial peptides (AMP). Indeed some AMPs showed significant inhibition of sperm motility effect. The second category is antisperm antibody (ASA). ASA were found in infertile human couples and have been identified. The goal of the project is to prove that our gram positive bacteria model Bacillus subtilis and Lactobacillus jensenii are able to produce such spermicidal molecules.

This non-hormonal contraception would be a long term contraception which takes place directly in the vagina where the vaginal microbiota would secrete spermicide in situ (Figure 2). It would be cheaper way of contraception, which is crucial for developing countries. Moreover this new kind of contraception would help to avoid some of the disadvantages of other contraceptives. This contraceptive would be reversible with kill-switches.



Figure 2: Scheme of the action of the modifed bacteria in the vagina.

Additionally, our project contains a model study to help the characterization of the strain. This bioinformatic approach lead us to the finding and sequence design of promoters for L. jensenii. A sperm motility analysis was conducted to determine an efficient way to measure the motility of sperm depending on spermicidal molecules in their environment. Finally, our studies of this strain have produced a toolbox that will help other teams to further engineer this less-characterized bacterium. This toolbox contains protocols to grow and transform L. jensenii as long with our constructs and plasmids that we used during our work.

Figure 3: Objectives of our Human Practices studies.



As part of our human practices (Figure 3) we conducted a survey that lead us to create a comic book to popularize and explain the subjects of contraception and the vagina. Different events for science popularization were created in order to make the subject better known.

Sponsors



Contact us

igem.assomtp@gmail.com

Centre de Biochimie Structurale, 29 Rue de Navacelles, 34090 Montpellier, France