The Transcriptome is back from the grave!

The Transcriptome started as a collaboration between the iGEM teams from Lausanne, Switzerland, and Gothenburg, Sweden, back in 2020 as a platform to share science. Since then it has been a way for our two teams to write about their projects and other interesting things in the field of synthetic biology. And this year iGEM Chalmers-Gothenburg and iGEM UNIL decided to continue the tradition and bring back the Transcriptome again!!

Every Tuesday we will present you with a new topic about recent and relevant discoveries made in the synthetic biology and biology field. We are so excited to bring this blog back to life for the third year in a row and share our passion for science with the world! So stay tuned and don’t forget to sign up for the email list so you’ll never miss a new post!!

iGEM competition

iGEM stands for “Internationally genetically engineered machine” and is a competition where students around the world compete against each other for medals and awards by designing, building, and testing projects using cutting edge synthetic biology. For this, students will design and genetically engineer microorganisms to solve real world issues in for example categories such as health, environment, food and nutrition and manufacturing. The aim of the projects is to come up with solutions for global or local problems and have a positive impact on the world. This year 361 teams from 46 different countries are participating in iGEM.

For more information about iGEM, check out their official website: https://igem.org/

The Chalmers-Gothenborg team 2022

This year the Chalmers-Gothenburg team consists of 13 ambitious students with backgrounds in bioengineering, mathematics, chemistry and microbiology. By being part of iGEM we hope to explore what might be achieved with synthetic biology and also improve our society in some way. During breaks we like to spend our time playing board and card games together.

The goal of the Chalmers-Gothenburg team’s project this year is to develop a diagnostic tool for the parasitic disease Schistosomiasis, or Snail fever. Schistosomiasis is classed as a neglected tropical disease (NTD) by WHO which is a category consisting of 20 different diseases most common in tropical parts of the world where proper sanitation often is inadequate (1). NTDs affect more than a billion people each year and have severe health, economic and social impact in the affected communities (2). What characterizes the diseases as neglected is that they have almost been completely absent from global health policy agendas, meaning that there is very little research being done and actions taken to eliminate them. 

For many of the neglected tropical diseases, including Schistosomiasis, effective and cheap medication for treatment actually exists (3). “Well that’s great.” you’re probably thinking. “Just treat them and the problem will be solved!”. However it is not that simple, the challenge lies in diagnosing the individuals rather than providing them with medication. This hindrance has also contributed to development of drug resistance due to extensive use of preventative large-scale treatments of populations (3). The problem is that diagnosing individuals is expensive and cumbersome, often requiring special equipment only available in labs (4). Many will thus go undiagnosed and without treatment for an extended period of time, leading to wider spread of the disease even if there are treatments available.

To tackle this problem iGEM Chalmers-Gothenburg aims to create an accessible, cheap and fast diagnostic tool that would enable testing to be performed at a higher rate without losing any accuracy. The design is called MoD³, short for Modular DNA Detecting Device. MoD³ is a test that can detect DNA from the parasite in human saliva and give a result visible to the naked eye by coloring the sample blue or violet if the individual is infected. By detecting DNA, MoD³ will be able to accurately diagnose an infection at a much earlier stage compared to existings methods that detect eggs from the parasite in stool samples. Being able to treat individuals in an earlier stage of the disease will help prevent the development of severe symptoms as well as hinder any further infections spread from the patient.

The UNIL team 2022

The UNIL team is made up of 2nd and 3rd year Biology students. For many of them, the use of synthetic biology to solve various challenges in biology is a very interesting approach. That is why this year, 14 students decided to join the iGEM adventure.

As for the UNIL team, project ideas were running wild during the discussions. We finally had to make a choice and it was on the topic of the environment that we decided to act. Indeed, through our various readings, we realized that there was something to be done about invasive species and our choice quickly came down to the Quagga mussel. The Quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) is coming from the eastern Europe and thriving in our lakes, the most impacted one in Switzerland being the Lake of Constance.

The different problems of these mussels are :

1. The decline of the local ecosystem as well as high costs for cleaning the drinking water pipes supply.
2. Mussels can reproduce throughout the year, as the reproduction can occur at 5°C already.
3. The important amount of Quagga mussels results in an intense filtration of the water, leaving little food to the original ecosystem.
4. The fouling of freshwater conduits.The shells occur in a water depth of up to 180m and therefore reach the water pipes of the drinking-water-supply-system at 60m.

We have chosen to focus our project on the problems caused in the pipes. Indeed, in addition to its presence in depth, it adheres very easily to the pipes because of its ease of fixation to the materials. As a result, the cleaning of the pipes is very costly and soon useless (5), because a large increase in the frequency of cleaning is required. Current solutions are to clean the pipes by hand, to use active charcoal or the use of chlorine and other chemicals (6).

As these methods are either expensive or environmentally inacceptable as long-term solutions, we came up with our project – Quagg’out – to solve this !
We decided to choose two approaches: prevention of adhesion and removal of mussels.

Firstly, our various readings have shown that exposing mussels to zosteric acid(7) can prevents their attachment to surfaces. We will therefore reprogram the machinery of the E.coli bacteria to produce zosteric acid and test different concentrations and applications of the product.

A second strategy of inhibiting the spread of Quagga-mussels is their targeted intoxication by using FitD (8). FitD is a toxin which is produced naturally by P.Fluorescens and well studied as an insecticide. Our project aims the overexpression of this toxin by P.fluorescens. The product then would be applied on the surfaces invaded by the mussels in order to eliminate the huge  colonies formed. The complementarity of these two approaches would initially make it possible to reduce the impact of the quagga mussel in pipes, both financially and in terms of health.

What’s next?

We are really excited about what’s coming next and we are looking forward to sharing this subject that we are so passionate about with you! 

If you want to know more about the iGEM competition and us, the About page will soon be updated with this year’s teams! And if you are interested in our projects and how our methods work, there will be webpages released for the projects later this autumn.

See you next week!

Reference

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/schistosomiasis

[2] https://www.who.int/health-topics/neglected-tropical-diseases#tab=tab_2

[3] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/neglected-tropical-diseases-treatment#:~:text=Some%20drug%20companies%20also%20donate,neglected%20parasitic%20worm%20disease%20schistosomiasis

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/schistosomiasis/diagnosis.html

[5] Maison de la Rivière

[6] (Association suisse du gaz et des eaux SVGW, 2021)

[7] (C.B. Jendresen , A.T. Nielsen)

[8] (Maria Péchy-Tarr, Naomi Borel, Peter Kupferschmied, Vincent Turner, Olivier Binggeli, Dragica Radovano, Monika Maurhofer and Christoph Keel)