IGEM:Virginia/2012/Notebook/Genetically engineered bacteriophage
for diagnosis of whooping cough |Customize your entry pages|
Whooping cough, the infectious respiratory disease caused by
Bordetella pertussis, is diagnosed in tens of millions of people
and results in almost 300,000 deaths globally each year. Low-
income and unvaccinated individuals as well as infants are
especially susceptible. Current diagnostic procedures are
complicated, costly, and can take up to a week, by which time
the disease may have progressed or spread. The enormous impact
of this disease urgently motivates the development of a faster,
cheaper, and more reliable diagnostic. Our epidemiology models
suggest that earlier diagnosis could drastically reduce the
incidence and impact of the disease. We propose an engineered
bacteriophage diagnostic system for rapid clinical detection of
pertussis. As a proof of principle, we worked on engineering the
T7 bacteriophage to express a version of the beta subunit of
human chorionic gonadotropin (