Team:Moscow RF
Team:Moscow RF
Welcome to Moscow_RF iGEM 2017 team!
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Project description
It is well-known that communication and cooperation play important role in our life. Unfortunately, many children, teenagers and adults are deprived of them due to autism.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) manifests in brain developmental disturbance that leads to complications in communication, social interaction and stereotyped behavior. Autism has strong impact on individual’s life as well as a society’s life. According to WHO statistics 1 in 160 children had an ASD in 2016. Despite of such prevalence of ASD its pathology and etiology are still unknown and effectiveness of existing therapies is very limited. It has long been presumed that the ASD has a genetic, immune or inflammatory origins, but nowadays scientists notice that environmental factors such as nutrition can also play crucial role in the development of this pathological condition. It was recently reported by many researchers that gluten- and casein-containing food can make the symptoms of ASD more severe.
Although gluten/casein-free diets (or GFCF) are very widespread nowadays, just as any diets they have their cons and pros. One the one hand, they may help increasing patient’s quality of life and lighten ASDs symptoms. Such dieting means exception of many useful products that can increase intestinal symptoms of disease. On the other hand, GFCF diets are expensive and in many countries such diet means strong limitation in food diversity. A medicine that can break substances potentially harmful for people with ASD directly in their organisms may solve this problem. Such medicine will allow patients to stick to “normal” diet instead of GFCF diet. The aim of our project is to make a biological system that will break down gluten and casein in individual’s gastro-intestinal tract. We plan using E. coli bacterium as a chassis organism for our project. Our modified E. coli strain will bear human dipeptidyl peptidase IV gene, a gene encoding enzyme that breaks down gluten. One of the challenges of our project is making DDP IV express and work only in GIT and nowhere else. Another one is making such design that will allow expression of DDP IV only in presence of gluten/casein. All of this will help avoiding potential side effects and making use of such medicine safe.
About us
About our project
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Team members
Wiki is under construction, please stay tuned for updates and check out us on social media (links below)!
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