Hello and welcome to the BIOMOD wiki page of Team Injectimod, from the lab down under!
We're Team Injectimod, a group of seven students from the University of New South Wales, based at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
We've been working on this project for the BIOMOD competition for the last four months, while juggling our university studies. Check out what we've been up to!
Biological self-assembly is responsible for the formation of molecular machines that have a remarkable complexity and variety of functions. In Nature, scaffolding allows for precise construction and organisation of supramolecular structures that exist in cellular machinery.
One example is the Type III secretion system (T3SS), bacteria's highly conserved molecular syringe, which self-assembles from dozens of individual proteins. The tip of the T3SS is needed for insertion of the syringe into the host cell. Upon insertion, effectors are secreted into the host cell and several effectsare exerted to promote bacterial survival and infection. However, the final structure of the tip complex and its mechanism of assembly are yet to ber determined.
Here at Team Injectimod, we aim to build a DNA scaffold to artificially assemble the T3SS tip complex! This is a new 'bottom-up' approach of investigating the kinetics and structural aspects of these complex biological machines. Also, successful assembly of this protein complex will establish a novel platform for vaccine development by artificially building antigenic structures.
Our BIOMOD 2015 video - from Australia's second BIOMOD team, Team Injectimod! We're sponsored by the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and the University of New South Wales and we've been working on a new design approach to Vaccines!
The motivation of our project idea, and how our project idea is scientifically and technologically interesting.
Where we will address the specification and feasibility of our project. The to-do list.
Where we show the merit of our proposed approaches to meet out goal.