Team:The Agency Escondido

Team Description

The Agency is an organization of students, parents, faculty and mentors operating out of the Classical Academy High School of Escondido, CA. Our objective is to compete in challenging venues, and to foster the development of skills and character needed to each occasion. Our efforts are focused in areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Project Description

Our project seeks to create a triad of similar bacteria strains with complementary antibiotic production and antibiotic resistance to emulate the game of "rock, paper, scissors". Each type of bacteria will produce a single antibiotic while remaining resistant to both its own antibiotic and that of one other bacteria type. Each type will additionally resist an antibiotic included in an agar "playing field".

When two of the three types of bacteria are combined and exposed to an environmental stimulus, one type will resist the antibiotic produced by the other, while the other will be vulnerable to the antibiotic produced by the first. The first type will therefore spread freely through the media while the growth of the second will be inhibited. To identify the "victorious" strain, each will include a different fluorescent reporter gene.

At the time of writing, the antibiotics to be used have not been selected, nor have the reporter genes been chosen.

Safety

Safety is of our greatest concern in all places which we operate. With hundreds of various reagents required for our goals we created a web application that manages the material safety data sheets in order that they can be stored and accessed on a moments notice. Material safety data sheets are designed to raise awareness of substances and illuminate our members of their heterogeneous natures.