Title: ENGINEERING STAPHYLOCOCCUS EPIDERMIDIS FOR THE TREATMENT OF DIABETES

Abstract: Diabetes is a chronic endocrine disease characterized by insulin deficiency and resulting elevated blood glucose levels. Diabetics, those suffering from diabetes, depend on exogenous injections of insulin to manage blood glucose levels and survive longer term. Poorly controlled diabetes can result in heart disease, neuropathy, and kidney failure. As a potential alternative I have been working towards the development a commensal skin microbe, Staphylococcus epidermidis, bioengineered to  sense and respond to elevated blood glucose levels. The ultimate goal is to implement within S. epidermidis a transcription-based biosensor responsive to elevated blood sugar levels that results in well-regulated and rapid production of a single-chain insulin analog. Here, I quantitatively estimated whether a skin microbe could provide enough insulin to treat Type I or Type II diabetes. I then developed a transcriptomics pipeline for characterizing organism-wide gene expression changes in response to medically relevant glucose concentrations. I used differential expression analysis of samples taken during the mid-exponential growth phase to identify candidate genes that are either upregulated or downregulated in response to glucose to facilitate the identification of glucose-inducible S. epidermidis switches. I also quantitatively explored the genome-wide transcription response of S. epidermidis to heat shock, both as a reference case for glucose response and its own merits. Finally, I explored whether conjugation could be used to reliably transfer DNA into S. epidermidis.

Please contact Madelyn Bernstein for the Zoom link