Team:Aix-Marseille/Description
Description
Our focus this year is fighting bed bugs, a worldwide invasive pest, which is invading homes and biting humans for their blood. These tiny bugs became harmful to humans from the moment we made caves our 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 don’t transmit any disease, it still induces serious dermatological and allergy issues.
We are aiming to find an efficient solution for eliminating bed bugs from infested living spaces. We have two main strategies: using pheromones as a chemical lure that can attract bed bugs into to a trap, where they will be eliminated using Beauveria bassiana, a highly virulent fungus for bed bugs, but safe for humans.
We want to elaborate an attractive lethal trap. For that, we need:
- Enhanced Beauveria bassiana: Overexpressing chitinase and lipase proteins to increase Beauveria bassiana's virulence.
- Produce pheromones in E. coli for the attractive action.
What is our plan ?
- 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 of fight against insects in agriculture in Canada, and later on, all over the world.
- The use of pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos is authorized in the European Union in any knowledge of the very numerous risks of toxicity incurred for the consumers of products of vegetable origin, by adding more the risks for mammals, birds, aquatic animals, and bees. Moreover, researchers are trying to find an eco-friendly and natural method to fight bed bugs. Thus, using B
- This fungus has a big capacity to penetrate into the protective coating of the bed bug, called cuticle. Once inside the insect, the fungus is going to multiply in its circulatory system and it will engender the death of the insect. Our objective is to improve the fungus so that it is more effective against bed bugs and on a more reduced duration. We want to reduce the lethal dosis, to increase efficiency to cause the death of the bugs. Furthermore, bed bugs are moreover resistant in the external attacks, because of selective pressure led by the excessive use of insecticides. And pesticides are becoming more and more ineffective against bed bugs. Beauveria bassiana is an alive organism which can be adapted to the evolution of bed bugs.
- The pheromones that we plan to use, are chemical molecules produced by the bugs themselves, helping them in their movement mechanism. Beauveria bassiana has a great ability to penetrate the protective layer of a bedbug (i.e. cuticle), leading consequently to death of the insect by altering its circulatory system.
Inspiration
We used some papers to elaborate our plan