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 Beauvaeria bassiana side to side with pheromones is one highly biological fight method.
- The fungus can easily penetrate bed bug's exoskeleton: the cuticle. Once inside the insect's hemolymph, the fungus feeds and multiplies, causing it's death. Our objective is to enhance the fungus so that it is highly virulent for bed bugs. We want to reduce the lethal doses and break the bugs. Furthermore, the excessive use of insecticides thickened the bed bug's cuticle. As a result, pest control companies are obliged to increase the insecticides' doses.
- The pheromones that we plan to use, are chemical molecules produced by the bugs. The use them to navigate and find their shelters.
Inspiration
We used some papers to elaborate our plan