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Revision as of 15:16, 30 June 2017
Why phages?
Antibiotic resistance is poised to become one of the greatest dangers of our time. Ever since the discovery of penicillin in 1928, antibiotics have been our first line of defense against bacterial infections. However, widespread overuse of antibiotics, coupled with minimal investment in new treatments have allowed pathogenic bacteria to develop resistances to many antibiotics. Fortunately, there is more than one way to kill bacteria. Bacteriophages (phages for short) are bacteria-specific viruses capable of killing select bacteria while leaving animal cells unharmed. For this reason, phages could potentially synergize with, or even replace antibiotics. This type of treatment is called phage therapy.
Why not yet?
Phage therapy does however have several issues to be ironed out before becoming a mainstream medical treatment. One major stumbling block for phage therapy is the high host specificity of phages. Many phages can only infect certain strains of a bacterial species. This creates the need for either large libraries of potential phages, or a quick method of developing a phage capable of fighting a given bacterial infection. In order to solve this problem, our project attempts the latter method.
Our project
For our project, we aim to develop a method of evolving phages capable of infecting a target bacteria strain. We plan to first harvest a catalogue of phages and identify their host bacteria. Phages are plentiful in nature, and by taking different water and soil samples, we will collect a variety of phages capable of infecting different bacteria. By genetically modifying host bacteria, we will accelerate the natural mutation rate of our respective phages. We plan to set up a controlled environment that favorizes phages capable of also infecting the target bacteria. We believe this method will be capable of quickly producing tailored phages, keeping us one step ahead of the resistant bacteria.
Email: igem-team@ntnu.no
