Team:Aix-Marseille/DEPS

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EPS Depolymerase

To fight the problem that is Xylella fastidiosa we firstly started searching for natural solutions against this bacterium and surely, we found bacteriophages that loved destroying this bacterium.

In our research, a modified phage would not be possible because of restrictions in spreading modified organisms which are able to replicate in the wild. Therefore, a non-lytic and non-lysogenic phage was born using fibrous phage M13 with a modification of its genome in the aim of being modular and flexible to use against varies pathogens.

The phages against Xylella fastidiosa have a devious way to infect the bacterium; by cleaving the sugar bond in the biofilm and then adsorbing on the type IV pili on the membrane, it sets off a series of events leading to the injection of the bacteriophage genome in the bacterium, triggering the life cycle of the phage.