A group of Columbia Engineering undergraduates recently brought home a bullion award from a International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) foe for engineering a new bacteria-based, non-toxic butterfly repellent. For some-more than 10 years, IGEM, a tip undergraduate group foe in fake biology, has speedy students to work together to solve real-world hurdles by building genetically engineered biological systems with standard, transmutable parts.
The Columbia Engineering group was desirous by a miss of vaccines for many prevalent mosquito-borne illnesses, generally a Zika virus, and sought to take advantage of biosurfactant compounds famous as rhamnolipids—found in a destructive germ Pseudomonas aeruginosa—that naturally repel mosquitos. Working closely with expertise and researchers from via a university, generally Professor Harris Wang of a Columbia University Medical Center, they built recombinant plasmids containing a genes that formula for rhamnolipids in a pathogenic germ and remade them into a opposite bacterial strain, Pseudomonas putida, that is submissive and can invariably furnish a compounds.
“We genetically engineered a submissive bacterial aria to furnish a non-trivial apportion of rhamnolipids,” pronounced Rachel Mintz ’۱۹, a member of a Columbia iGEM team.
Unlike normal repellents like DEET that mistreat a environment, final usually a brief time, and tend to annoy skin, a engineered germ could potentially be used in new lotions that would not need to be reapplied. The group conducted tellurian dungeon enlightenment experiments and found no poignant toxicity from a germ or rhamnolipids. They demonstrated explanation of judgment regulating tangible mosquitos.
At a iGEM 2016 Jamboree in Boston in October, a team—consisting of Jacky Cheung CC ’۱۸, James Gornet ’۱۹, Kirsten Jung ’۱۷, Hudson Lee CC’۱۸, Theresa Mensah CC ’۱۸, Mintz, and Kaitlin Pet CC ’۱۷—competed with 5,600 participants from 42 countries. Presenting in a environmental category, they were among a 112 teams to accept a bullion award in this year’s competition.
Looking ahead, a students devise to control serve experiments examining a impact of rhamnolipids on mice.
“Our plan intent in many sparkling components of research, from tellurian dungeon enlightenment to genetic engineering to butterfly experiments,” Mintz said. “I schooled so most operative with a team, and we are over unapproachable of what we were means to accomplish during only one summer.”
—by Jesse Adams
