Team:HKUST-Hong Kong/content.html

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Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [Greetings + General description to project/site] //We are the 2011 iGEM team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) . This is the 4th year for HKUST tynthetic biology competition. // // // // // // //	[Highlights]//
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	[Accomplishment]//We are the 2011 iGEM team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) . This is the 4th year for HKUST tynthetic biology competition.// fgbxf
On this Wiki page, we are presenting how synthetic biology could contribute to health and medical studies. We are here introducing an idea – an interspecies quorum-quenching system in which non-pathogenic Lactobacillus could sense and reduce the virulence of Staphylococcus aureus. Such a model system should not yield a strong selective pressure for development of resistance, and would therefore be an attractive concept for preventive medicine.Click here to read more about our project: pseudo link. Thanks to our experienced instructors, considerate advisors and every team member from HKUST iGEM 2010 family, we enjoyed a fantastic summer working cooperatively and effectively towards our goal. The logo below demonstrates our project idea: having non-pathogenic Lactobacillus (left) ‘working’ against virulent S. aureus (right): == Project Abstract == It has often been assumed that when an antibiotic is introduced to a bacterial community, only cells that carry resistance genes will survive and proliferate. However, recent findings have suggested that communities with a mixture of highly resistant (HR) and less resistant (LR) individuals are able to survive through ‘charity’ by HR individuals, which support LR individuals through indole signalling. Our team aims to interfere with this signalling through introducing a disruptor ''E. coli'' into the bacterial community. This new strain will be able to degrade indole using a mutated toluene-4-monooxygenase (T4MO). We hypothesize that LR cells in the community deprived of indole will undergo eliminated at lower antibiotic concentrations. If this demonstration is successful, indole degradation might prove to be a possible strategy in boosting antibiotics effectiveness in medical practice against bacteria that rely on such signalling. Along the way, we will also create a new strain of ''E. coli'' that utilizes an essential gene (''nadE'') as the selection marker for transformation, allowing antibiotics-free transformation and plasmid maintenance for regular laboratory manipulation. This new transformation method can be adopted for future iGEM teams, reducing their use of antibiotics without increasing the complexity of the transformation protocol.