Antibiotics detection and degradation system
Antibiotics serve an important role in controlling infectious diseases. However, incorrect use of antimicrobial agents may cause environment contamination. During this season, our team has designed a novel system to detect and degrade β-lactams in order to provide a potential solution to antibiotic pollution. Mec system from Staphylococcus aureus and the β-lactamase blaCMY-10 in Enterobacter aerogenes were designed as our antibiotics detective and degradative system respectively, which were adapted into E. coli. The results of antibiotics detection illustrated that it can be sensitive to low concentration of ampcilin. And the zone of inhibition test showed that blaCMY10 can effectively degrade ampcilin, cephalothin and cefoxitin which is consistent with what we expected. In our final applied design, we aim to create a combined device, it can be installed at wastewater treatment facilities and the drainage outlet at hospitals, farms and so on.
