Project Description

Engineered probiotics alleviate the inflammatory bowel disease and prevent colorectal cancer

Due to the popularity of fast food and accelerated urbanization nowadays, the number of patients with inflammatory bowel disease(IBD) is rising in Asia. In addition, patients with IBD have an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer(CRC). Therefore, NEU China A aim to design a biological system against IBD and potential CRC by using engineered probiotics this year. To put out the fire in the gut, E. coli Nissle 1917 is selected as our firemen. We empower it with an anti-inflammatory device, which includes a sensor to detect the inflammatory signal, an amplifier to enhance the work ability through positive-feedback loop and an effector to secret anti-inflammatory part. Besides, we should watch out the bad guys such as cancer cells or invasive bacterial. So, we choose Saccharomyces boulardii to be our policemen. It is armed with a constitutively expressed myrosinase to turn the glucosinolates, a natural component of cruciferous vegetables, to sulphoraphane which is an organic molecule with known anticancer activity. We also equip our E. coli with this module since the sulphoraphane can inhibit the oxidative stress. In other hand, to restrict the bacterial invasion, the yeast is made to produce Lypd8, a protein represses the move of bacterial by binding to the flagella. Moreover, we decide to use a cold shock kill switch to avoid the escape of our chassis to the environment and more supporting modules will be added if necessary. We hope these modules will incorporate into a functional system eventually. Integrating probiotic therapy with synthetic biology, we envision that the collaboration between the firemen and the policemen will greatly help us to overcome the tough situation in the patient’s gut.

lab environment