2012- 21st Annual NC State Undergraduate Research Symposium

Session Time : 4/10/12 10:30 AM - 4/10/12 11:45 AM

Content Area : Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Poster Appointment: , -

Student Presenters :
Heidi Elizabeth Klumpe Chemical Engineering

Mentors and/or Co-Authors :
Chase Beisel Chemical & Biomolecular Eng

Abstract Title : An alternative to antibiotics: engineering the CRISPR system to trigger autoimmunity in pathogenic bacteria

Abstract :
The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance has significantly reduced our capacity to treat bacterial infections. We propose to reverse engineer the CRISPR system, a bacterial immune response which degrades foreign DNA, to target the bacterium’s own genomic DNA. In a wild-type cell, short RNAs are expressed from the CRISPR locus, and these CRISPR RNAs (or crRNAs) guide the endonucleolytic CRISPR-associated proteins to their targets, usually the DNA of an invading virus or plasmid. The foreign DNA is then degraded to guard against infection.

The goal of this project is to construct a plasmid platform for expression of redesigned crRNAs which will instead target the bacterial genome. Previous work demonstrates that the targets of the CRISPR system can be modified by altering the sequence of the crRNAs. We hypothesize that a successfully-modified system (expressing genome-targeting CRISPR RNAs and the appropriate CRISPR-associated genes) will degrade the genomic DNA, causing rapid bacterial cell death. If successful, targeting the genome with CRISPR could serve as a novel alternative to antibiotics.