Team:UMaryland/Description
Project Inspiration and Description
The Chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and Batrachochytrium Salamandrivorans are pathogenic parasitic fungi decimating frog and salamander populations worldwide. Through the rise of global trade, fungal spores have been able to travel across the globe and infect unsuspecting amphibians, clinging onto their skin and inhibiting the animal's respiration.
Many scientists are working to create treatments for the frogs, but current fungus detection methods are limited to the traditional and time consuming processes of qPCR and ELISA. While these methods work well for scientists in the lab, they are too expensive and slow to be useful for detecting chytrid as needed for spread prevention. Challenge.gov realized this, subsequently put out a challenge for people to come up with a cheaper, faster alternative that can be used in time crunched ports in transportation hubs like airports (which often deal with the transport of live animals in addition to goods).
Our team saw the challenge and decided to take it on. We plan to create a detection system employing the power of Crispr-dCas9, and will be using engineered bacteria during our research in order to ultimately create an in vitro detection system able to analyze the DNA present in shipped frogs, and quickly able to alert the test-giver of the presence of the fungi.