Silver Medal Human Practices

We met with Dr. Jason Blackburn from the University of Florida to discuss the design of our project. Dr. Blackburn specializes in wildlife disease ecology and is the associate curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Dr. Blackburn was excited to hear about our project. He thought it would be a good idea to work with a singular antifungal compound in order to identify if the isolated bacterial metabolites have therapeutic potential against Chytridiomycosis. Dr. Blackburn pointed out that research has been conducted towards supplementing the amphibian skin microbiome with symbiotic bacteria to prevent the Chytridiomycosis infection. However bacterial metabolites synthesized from modified E. coli have not yet been tested. Dr. Blackburn discussed the potential of producing the bacterial metabolites on a larger scale for use in combating Chytridiomycosis because the bacterial metabolites do not come with the same health hazards that traditional antifungal treatments have for amphibians.

We also received feedback on our project design from Dr. Anna Savage from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Savage’s research focuses on the immunogenetics and disease ecology of Chytridiomycosis and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Dr. Savage expressed her concern that we were not appropriately distinguishing between effective antifungal activity against Bd (or another fungus in the Chytridiomycota family) in the lab, and prevention or treatment of the Chytridiomycosis infection in the natural environment. Unfortunately we were not able to receive permissions to test on frogs over the duration of the iGEM competition, but this step would be necessary for future experimental verification that the bacteria are capable of preventing infection in the natural environment. Dr. Savage also suggested that we consider several other secondary metabolite compounds to diversify the antifungal activity of our bacteria and to therefore ensure maximum antifungal against Bd. We did initially consider using violacein in addition to tryptophol, however violacein is a broad antifungal that would ecologically impact natural fungal species other than Bd. We struggled to find another antifungal compound that would have a minimal impact on the greater ecosystem so we decided to just modify E. coli to produce tryptophol for this project.

We also started a community dialogue through events with the Florida Museum of Natural History and through presentations to classes at the University of Florida. Our public outreach can be seen here: