This project could have important implications in the fields of medicine, mining and water treatment. One would be able to send a "bacterial-messenger" out to detect certain substances which can act as chemoattractants - such as disease biomarkers or elemental metals. Via chemotaxis, the messenger ''E.coli'' will be able to search an area and locate the source of the chemoattractant. It will then travel back to the starting point to report back on its findings. Based on the information provided by these "messenger bacteria" a probability density map can be generated, from which the location of the chemoattractant source can be determined. A potential application in diagnostics could be the non-invasive detection and localisation of cancerous cells in the colon, for example.
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The CSIR Wits South Africa team consists of six enthusiastic undergraduate students
each having their own area of expertise. Four of the members are studying science
and two are studying engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. The biologists
are from the schools of Molecular and Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine and Hematology.
The team has two engineering students, one studying information engineering and
the other, chemical engineering. This team is a dynamic one where each team member
has something unique to offer to the competition.
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We created the following software during the competition.
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