Team:USP-Brazil/ConceptualFramework/Chassis
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Chassis
For a successful “Trojan Horse” approach to eliminate diseases, the choice of the proper horse is essential. And there are a lot of good options, ready to be tinkered with by the iGEM community!
An ideal chassis for controlling population of parasites should be:
- Easy to cultivate and modify
- Naturally adapted to your targeted insect species
- Non pathogenic for humans, animals or plants
- Transmissible vertically and horizontally in your targeted population
Here we provide a list of possible chassis characterized for future synthetic biology work:
Table of chassis
Ideal organismus |
Pantoea agglomerans |
Serratia sp. |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
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Targets: Any disease Literature example: - Bio Safety Level 1 Relation with vector: Obligatory symbiont, all insects that transmit one disease Engineering score (0-5) : 5 (as fast and good as E. coli) Insect to insect transmisson: Vertical and horizontal |
Targets: Malaria, Denge, Zika, Others Previous use: (1) Bio Safety Level 1 or 2 Relation with vector: Extracellular commensal, Anopheles; Aedes; found ubiquitously Engineering score (0-5) : 4.5 (works with pSB1C3 series!) Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
Targets: Malaria Previous use: (2) Bio Safety Level 1 or 2 Relation with vector: Extracellular commensal, Anopheles; found ubiquitously Engineering score (0-5) : 4 (doubling time of 49 min, (3)) Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
Sodalis sp |
Asaia sp |
Rhodococcus rhodnii |
|
 |
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Targets: African Sleeping Sicknes (Trypanosoma brucei ) Literature example: (4) Bio Safety Level 1 Relation with vector: Secondary symbiont, Glossina sp Engineering score (0-5) : 2 (doubling time of 15 hours) Insect to insect transmisson: Vertical and horizontal(5) |
Targets: Malaria, Flavescence Dorée Previous use: iGEM Team EPFL 2010 (6) Bio Safety Level 1 or 2 Relation with vector: Extracellular commensal, Anopheles sp., Scaphoideus titanus Engineering score (0-5) : 3 (Doubling time of 2h40min) Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
Targets: Chagas' disease Previous use: (7) Bio Safety Level 1 Relation with vector: Extracellular commensal, Rhodnius prolixus Engineering score (0-5) : 2 (slow growth (8)) Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
Metarhizium anisopliae |
Densonucleosis virus |
Alcaligenes sp. |
 |  |
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Targets: Malaria and others Literature example: (9) Bio Safety Level 1 Relation with vector:Pathogen, broad host insect range Engineering score (0-5) : 2 (filamentous fungi) Insect to insect transmisson: Horizontal (10) |
Targets: Malaria Previous use: (11) Bio Safety Level 1 Relation with vector: Weak pathogen (12) of Anopheles gambiae , varieties may infect other insects Engineering score (0-5) : 3 (can be fully synthetized, but needs mosquito cell culture) Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
Targets: Citrus Variegate Chlorosis, Pierce's disease (Xylella fastidiosa) Previous use: (13) Bio Safety Level 1 or 2 Relation with vector: Extracellular commensal, Hemiptera: Cicadellidae family; xylem of plants Engineering score (0-5) : 3 Insect to insect transmisson: Incomplete evidence |
But remember, the sky is the limit! iGEM teams could use metagenomics and public databases to develop great chassis for specific challenges. Developing tools for new organisms is challenging, but the reward could be the virtual elimination of pathogenic species. Good, isn’t it?
In our experimental part, we used for the first time the organism Pantoea agglomerans in iGEM, as an example of interesting chassis. Check it out here.
References
- Wang, Sibao, et al. "Fighting malaria with engineered symbiotic bacteria from vector mosquitoes." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.31 (2012): 12734-12739.
- Wang, Sibao, et al. "Driving mosquito refractoriness to Plasmodium falciparum with engineered symbiotic bacteria." Science 357.6358 (2017): 1399-1402.
- Fedrigo, Griselda V., et al. "Serratia marcescens is able to survive and proliferate in autophagic-like vacuoles inside non-phagocytic cells." PloS one 6.8 (2011): e24054.
- De Vooght, Linda, et al. "Delivery of a functional anti-trypanosome nanobody in different tsetse fly tissues via a bacterial symbiont, Sodalis glossinidius." Microbial cell factories 13.1 (2014): 156.
- De Vooght, Linda, et al. "Paternal transmission of a secondary symbiont during mating in the viviparous tsetse fly." Molecular biology and evolution 32.8 (2015): 1977-1980.
- Bongio, Nicholas J., and David J. Lampe. "Inhibition of Plasmodium berghei development in mosquitoes by effector proteins secreted from Asaia sp. bacteria using a novel native secretion signal." PloS one 10.12 (2015): e0143541.
- Durvasula, Ravi V., et al. "Prevention of insect-borne disease: an approach using transgenic symbiotic bacteria." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94.7 (1997): 3274-3278.
- Jose, Christo, et al. "Recombinant Arthrobacter β-1, 3-glucanase as a potential effector molecule for paratransgenic control of Chagas disease." Parasites & vectors 6.1 (2013): 65.
- Fang, Weiguo, et al. "Development of transgenic fungi that kill human malaria parasites in mosquitoes." Science 331.6020 (2011): 1074-1077.
- Dimbi, Susan, Nguya K. Maniania, and Sunday Ekesi. "Horizontal transmission of Metarhizium anisopliae in fruit flies and effect of fungal infection on egg laying and fertility." Insects 4.2 (2013): 206-216.
- Ren, Xiaoxia, Egbert Hoiczyk, and Jason L. Rasgon. "Viral paratransgenesis in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae." PLoS pathogens 4.8 (2008): e1000135.
- Ren, Xiaoxia, et al. "Anopheles gambiae densovirus (AgDNV) has negligible effects on adult survival and transcriptome of its mosquito host." PeerJ 2 (2014): e584.
- Bextine, Blake, et al. "Delivery of a genetically marked Alcaligenes sp. to the glassy-winged sharpshooter for use in a paratransgenic control strategy." Current microbiology 48.5 (2004): 327-331.
