Team:USNA Annapolis/Attributions

Attributions

Students and Mentors

Student Work

In The Lab

This section I am going to need a few statements about what each student does, maybe have a short write up from each person, hyperlink their names to the Team page.

Applications

The protein within the plasmid backbone of bacteria natural to the human microbiome could be used as a therapeutic drug to protect people from possible toxicants in the environment by sensing their harmful effects within biofilms and host cells or as a therapeutic drug to enhance someone’s natural microbiome by beneficial ionic responses with biofilm formation. For example, it could be taken and used to coat the insides of the respiratory tract to detect changes and prevent unregulated ion channels. This in turn could prevent serious bodily harm with minimal disturbance of ion balance/ biofilms and could enhance microbiome response overall.

Protective biofilms throughout your body

Bacteria communicate with each other and the host cells

Create a sensor for ions for cell to cell communications in a medically relevant way

Out on the battlefield and expect to be exposed

What’s the response from the respiratory tract

Cell-cell communication within biofilms and with the host using ions within the human body

Risks

Our modified organism could pose the risk of environmental release, if applied to the human body. We will need to engineer in a kill-switch mechanism, or another self-destruct mechanism to control unintended proliferation.