Project Description

The theme of our iGEM entry this year is water safety. In particular, we will focus on using synthetic biology to achieve two goals. The first of these goals is to develop a novel method for detecting Legionella spp. in water systems, with the ability to distinguish between live and dead bacteria. Legionella is the bacteria that is responsible for causing Legionnaire’s disease in humans – a disease that causes pneumonia. It lives only in aquatic environments, usually as an intracellular parasite of protozoa such as amoebas. Legionnaire’s disease currently has no vaccine, so prevention relies on maintenance of Legionella spp. free water supplies. Currently we are looking at detecting Legionella mRNA using a complementary guide RNA that activates dCas9 when binding, to express GFP on a plasmid.

Our second goal is to develop and sequence a strain of E. coli that can utilise oestrogen as a source of carbon. Modern practises of society including agriculture and pharmaceuticals have increased the level of oestrogen in natural water sources such as rivers and lakes. This poses a large risk to aquatic species, especially fish, and has been shown to cause collapse of fish populations. We aim to investigate genetically modified bacteria as a potential starting point for a solution to this problem. By using directed evolution, we aim to synthesise a strain of E. coli that has the ability to use oestrogen as a carbon source, and then use sequencing to observe and study the genetic changes that allow it to do so.