(498f) Deregulating Native Bacterial Genetic Circuits As a Potential Anti-Microbial Therapeutic

The emergence of microbes resistant to multiple antibiotics is an imminent global health threat, generating untreatable “super bugs” that could also be engineered for bioterrorism purposes. Resistance to novel small-molecule antibiotics can quickly evolve and spread to other species through horizontal gene-transfer, mitigating years of research and development, making them unattractive drug candidates. Current development approaches screen large libraries of chemicals against pathogens and are capital and resource intensive. Machine-learning has been utilized to more efficiency discover new antibiotic modes of action, but this approach remains part of the traditional development pipeline. Ideally, we would 1) rapidly identify pathogens through sequencing and 2) synthesize cheap and targeted antidotes on-demand to combat emerging threats. Towards that end, we anticipate that disrupting gene regulation that controls cellular metabolism and division could be an attractive method to kill pathogenic or bioengineered bacteria. This talk will outline efforts to select strain specific gene targets, tests to deregulate these circuit through internal and external treatments and tests to determine the specificity of treatment, such that only the targeted bacteria would be altered.