IGEM:Caltech/2008

We aim to engineer a probiotic bacterium to improve its medical applications. Our work focuses on four main areas: (1) pathogen defense, either by expression of pathogen-specific bacteriophage or by targeted bursts of reactive oxygen species; (2) vitamin over-expression and delivery; (3) treatment of lactose intolerance, by preferentially metabolizing lactose and funneling it to vitamin production; and (4) regulation of these three treatment functions to produce subpopulations specialized for each function.