Difference between revisions of "Team:Nottingham/Achievements"

Models were created to give insights into the use of lytic vs temperate phage and to determine whether the treatment would be more successful over a prolonged period if the phage kept its ability to enter the lytic cycle rather than removing this ability to produce a strictly temperate phage. It was also used to study how these impacted on the titre of phage that would need to be administered.

Integrated human practices: We consulted with experts from within the field from various universities across the UK, including University of Birmingham and University of Leeds, as well as holding a discussion group with non-scientists. This allowed us to inform the decisions we made in both the lab design and the modelling. The discussion group were concerned about the delivery of the phage and it was suggested by an expert that delivery should be by capsule. This was therefore chosen as the delivery method for the phage therapeutic, rather than using injection. The discussion group were also concerned about how elderly people would be informed about the new therapeutic therefore, a leaflet about phage therapy was created which could be given to patients to provide advice. Our integration is summarised in a flow diagram on our Wiki. We have also created a human practices gold guide to help future iGEM teams with their human practices.

We have improved the characterisation of the part BBa_J23119 by the addition of an RBS and GFP, and characterised its fluorescence relative to iGEM InterLab control plasmids, using the calibration curves generated during the InterLab study. The new composite part used for this characterisation was BBa_K2715119. Additionally as part of our collaborative studies, we invited two other iGEM teams to characterise our composite parts using their equipment and calibration curves, and the observed reproducibility between laboratories further validated our observations. Furthermore this part has now been characterised in a Gram-negative and a Gram-positive non-model organism. When tested in Gram-positive organism it was driving expression of gusA.

We demonstrated that our second antisense RNA construct [BBa_K2715008] was able to suppress the rate of production of toxin in C. difficile by 85%, validating our approach to reducing toxicity.

We successfully validated the functionality of the following submitted parts: BBa_K2715001, BBa_K2715002 and BBa_K2715008.

We collaborated with the University of Warwick and Imperial College London to validate our promoters and we collected a water sample for the University of Warwick. We also collaborated with Team BioMarvel, Korea to grammar check their Wiki pages.

We held a discussion group with non-scientists to determine their thoughts and feelings on antibiotic resistance and alternative therapies. We also interviewed experts in the field from different universities in the UK. We have also compiled reports showing the impact of our project on the community and whether elderly people have difficulties taking their prescribed medication. We also mined the comments from a you tube video on phage therapy to explore the emotions people feel towards phage therapy.

We have registered for the iGEM competition and will be attending the Giant Jamboree.

We have completed the competition deliverables, to produce a Wiki, poster, presentation and complete the judging form.

We have created an Attributions page showing the attributions for every aspect of our project.

We participated and had our results accepted in the InterLab Measurement Study.