Team:Warsaw

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Our project aims at creating a carrier bacteria, which could be used to deliver genes coding a chosen protein into the human cell. Some bacteria have a natural ability to enter eukaryotic cells. Our goal is to introduce this feature to bacteria which do not exhibit it normally, and which can be safely used to carry the “load” into an animal organism, and in the future the human body. As a result, thanks to the introduced gene, the eukaryotic cell has the ability to produce a new, normally not produced protein and the bacterial carrier decomposes after fulfilling its mission. This arrangement is not only an impressive scientific toy, but it also has important applications.

We will divide our project into two tasks: first will involve creating Bacillus subtilis strain with the ability to enter eukaryotic cell and subsequent lysis. From lysed B.subtilis cells GFP protein will be released so fluorescence measurement can be used to confirm success of the experiment. The second task is to create eukaryotic vector capable of replication and gene expression within host cell. Again, fluorescence measurement will be used to verify whether we've achieved our goal. Due to safety issues, we will not combine these two systems but only test them separately. One day it will be possible to use the whole system, but we must wait for some crucial problems to be dealt with.