Engineered cells that detect and kill a pathogen: A novel synthetic biology-based antimicrobial strategy

2^nd International Conference and Exhibition on Materials Science & Engineering

October 07-09, 2013 Hampton Inn Tropicana, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Nazanin Saeidi, Choon-Kit Wong, Tat-Ming Lo, Hung Xuan Nguyen, Mohamed Arshath, Susanna Leong Su Jan, Chueh Loo Poh and Matthew Wook Chang

Accepted Abstracts: J Material Sci

Abstract :

Synthetic biology has allowed us to design and construct new biological systems that have the potential to resolve important issues related to healthcare. Considering the stalled development of advanced antibiotics and the emergence of antibiotic- resistant pathogens, we now must strive to exploit synthetic biology approaches for designing a new treatment regimen for infectious diseases. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to engineer microbes to detect and kill a pathogen using synthetic biology principles. Briefly, we designed and constructed a genetic system, which comprises detecting and killing devices, that enables Escherichia coli to sense and kill a pathogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain. We further characterized individual devices to understand their functionalities, which helped us to construct the final system and verify its behaviour. Finally, we showed that our engineered E. coli detects and kills P. aeruginosa , which offers a novel synthetic biology-based antimicrobial strategy that could readily be expanded to treating other infectious pathogens. For further optimization of our current system, we have also done mathematical modelling on the quorum sensing device using computer aided design (CAD) tools to capture steady state and dynamic behaviour of the system.

Biography :

Nazanin Saeidi has completed her Ph.D. at the age of 27 years from School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is currently doing her postdoctoral studies at Singapore Membrane Technology Centre. She has published few papers in reputed journals like Molecular Systems Biology from Nature publishing group and has presented her works in international conferences. She also has one published patent at United States Patent.