Team:Washington

Note: this is a very crude sketch that will be (likely) turned into a final banner

Antibiotics for the 21st Century

While vital to our quality of life, traditional antibiotics face the serious problems of widespread bacterial resistance and destruction of natural gut flora - problems which call for improved twenty-first century antibiotics. Using synthetic biology tools, we designed, built, and tested two new systems to fight infections by both broad types of bacteria - Gram-positive and Gram-negative. Our first project targets Bacillus anthracis, the Gram-positive pathogen that causes anthrax. We re-engineered an enzyme to remove the pathogen's protective coating, rendering it defenseless against the immune system. In our second project, we re-engineered and transplanted a protein secretion system capable of combating Gram-negative bacteria into E. coli. This system was designed to target Gram-negative pathogens in a modular and controllable fashion. These two systems are the vanguard of a new era of antibiotics using the power of nature harnessed with the tools of synthetic biology.

will include intro image, idea is currently being fleshed out from sketch into image Things to Do:

• more pictures everywhere!
• main graphic-in progress
• front page
  • pic of secretion apparatus
• gram(+) therapeutic
  • design
    • foldit pictures
    • captions
    • explain foldit
  • test results
    • more descriptive images

story: (img for each point)

• 21st century antibiotics, needs a banner to show what it means? 12th century battle scene with bacteria?
• postive and negative
• summary(pacman graphic), why anthrax bad? proteins fighting anthrax.
• Design
• (CP graphic)
• computational redesign
• build
• mutants
• expression and purification
• test result
• gel/mass spec cp vs D
• activity cp vs D
• catalytic KO of CP vs CP
• CP mutations
• Specificity switch