Team:Mingdao

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SUGAR CRUSH

WHAT IS SUGAR CRUSH

- Probiotic-based sugar retrieval system

According to research, about 7 adults in 10 suffer the problem of overweight or even obesity, and it is expected that more people are going to get into this kind of unhealthy problem. One of the most major factors that lead to obesity is “sugar”, which could be easily found in beverages, dessert, and almost any kind of food. Thus, it is quite difficult not to absorb too much amount of sugar in our daily lives. In hope of preventing our bodies from absorbing too much glucose, our team aims to engineer bacteria that absorb glucose more efficiently. Our team constructed glucose active transporters on the membrane of E.coli, enabling the glucose uptake to become faster than intestine cells. On the other hand, our team has designed a suicide circuit ensuring the bacteria don’t absorb all the sugar and the body can get adequate amount of sugar.

Project Slideshow

Glucose Transporter Device

Glucose transporter with high efficiency was cloned from Salmonella which enhanced the glucose absorption in the engineered E. coli.

Suicide Circuit

The suicide process was induced upon the loss of glucose which extends the functions of the existing parts glucose response promoter, repressor system, lysis and nuclease genes

Probiotic System

A novel homologous recombination vector for transforming Lactobacillus was created and designed based on the standard BioBrick assembly rule

Modeling & Acid-Resistant Pill

Lactobacillus was encapsulated into gel sphere which is acid resistant in pH=2 (gastric acid) and released in pH=9 in small intestine environment

Prototype & Applied Design

simulate a pill passing through esophagus (pH=7) and stomach (pH=2) to the small intestine (pH=9) in the digestive system.

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OUR ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievement

- 1.5 Years - 18 comrades -
See how much We've achieved!

Human Practice

Not limitted to the Lab,
we make dreams into reality

Project

We dream big,
with substantial SynBio study

Project Explained

Sugar makes you happy but you may have a concern for obesity and diabetes. This year we “crushed” the sugar before absorbed into the small intestine using a genetically engineered microbe with a facilitated glucose transporter system. Until running out of the glucose, a suicide circuit in a glucose responsive repressor system will be triggered to lyse bacterial cells by lysis proteins and degrade gDNA by nucleases. We also created a Lactobacillus recombination vector with standard BioBrick assembly sites for stably transforming probiotics through chromosomal homologous recombination.
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