Project Description
We chose to examine how bacteriopahge (which are natural vectors for
horizontal gene transfer) could be used to engineering a microbial
population, such as E. coli found within the gut, in order to have new
capabilities of breaking down dietary isoflavones into useful compounds.
We wanted to do this because only a small fraction of the population
possess the gut bacteria capable of naturally breaking down the soybean
isoflavone daidzein and turning it into equol which provides health
benefits. We would like to have a way to provide everyone with the same
health benefits by providing a mechanism to scale up conversion of
daidzein into equol.
Our plan and inspiration
- We will use modified M13 bacteriophage as a gene carrier to transfer
genes to E. coli for converting a metabolite found in soybean into a
compound known to interact with estrogen receptor beta.
- Our team chose this project as we hope to provide a way to engineer
gut bacteria to breakdown dietary isoflavones into compounds with health
benefits.
- Understanding how introducing a genetic system into a microbial
population such as E. coli and how it may ultimately impact their growth
within their microbial community is important.
- We use the genes daidzein reductase, dihydrodaidzein racemase,
dihydrodaidzein reductase, and tetrahydrodaidzein reductase from
Lactococcus garvieae subcloned into the M13 bacteriophage genome.
- These are are transformed into E. coli to produce phage carrying
these genes, and the new phage are used to infect E. coli and assess the
rate of conversion of daidzein to equol under different conditions.
References