Major
Bioinformatics
Anticipated Graduation Year
2021
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are infections that occur in the bladder, kidneys, ureter, urethra or prostate, and are considered one of the most common bacterial infections of the body. The most common cause of UTIs is Escherichia coli; a Gram-negative bacterium that is typically a healthy part of the body’s bacterial biome. The management of reoccurring UTIs has become substantially more difficult to treat due to increasing antibacterial resistance. An alternative to antibiotics is bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophages (or phage) are viruses that infect bacteria, injecting their DNA, replicating, and then lysing (killing) the bacterial host. Phages usually only infect a single bacterial species, which allows for them to have the potential to be a targeted treatment option. This project was focused on obtaining the host specificity ranges for 8 phages, creating a machine learning algorithm to determine which di- or tri- amino acid within each respective phage tail fiber gene was most informative for its host range, and attempting to expand the host range of the phage, N4, using a chemical mutagen.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Dr. Catherine Putonti, Bioinformatics Program Director and Associate Professor, Bioinformatics; Dr. Dmitriy Dligach, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Genetically Engineering Phages for Therapeutic Use in Treating UTIs
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are infections that occur in the bladder, kidneys, ureter, urethra or prostate, and are considered one of the most common bacterial infections of the body. The most common cause of UTIs is Escherichia coli; a Gram-negative bacterium that is typically a healthy part of the body’s bacterial biome. The management of reoccurring UTIs has become substantially more difficult to treat due to increasing antibacterial resistance. An alternative to antibiotics is bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophages (or phage) are viruses that infect bacteria, injecting their DNA, replicating, and then lysing (killing) the bacterial host. Phages usually only infect a single bacterial species, which allows for them to have the potential to be a targeted treatment option. This project was focused on obtaining the host specificity ranges for 8 phages, creating a machine learning algorithm to determine which di- or tri- amino acid within each respective phage tail fiber gene was most informative for its host range, and attempting to expand the host range of the phage, N4, using a chemical mutagen.