Team:TCU Taiwan/FutureWorks

In the future, we plan to make our Trogene Horse become a substitute to antibiotics. Because antibiotic uses are forbidden in some industry (ex. animal husbandry), there is no sense silencing resistance gene in these parts.

We believe 16S rRNA gene can be the new taget of our Trogene Horse. The 16S rRNA gene is the most common housekeeping genetic marker, it has some special characters we are interested:

1. Its presence in almost all microbe, and its sequence remains high conservation.
2. The function of the 16S rRNA gene over time has not changed (help constructing ribosome).

As 16S rRNA gene sequence is similar among species, it is possible to design a gRNA targets all kinds of 16S rRNA gene. Because the 16S rRNA is necessary for ribosome, knock-out of its gene will block gene expression and inhibit growth of target bacteria. This shall avoid co-effect of antibiotic use and remains high efficiency because we use phages as vector.

Reference: JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY , Vol. 45, No. 9