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MSc Exit Seminar -Paige Homme (McMillen Lab)
September 14, 2017 @ 12:10 pm
MSc Exit Seminar
Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 12:10 pm, DV3129- University of Toronto at Mississauga
Paige Homme (McMillen Lab)
“Whole-cell regenerating ‘microbead’ to capture disease antibodies using the yeast species, Pichia pastoris”
Abstract:
Guiding appropriate medical treatment and population surveillance are a few examples of the crucial functions of diagnostics in health care [1]. Antibody based assays are routinely employed, however, they often require substantial resources limiting their use in low-resource settings. Richard Kil and others in Prof. David McMillen’s lab proposed a synthetic biology solution: using yeast as `microbeads’ to detect Chagas disease and dengue antibodies. The yeast diagnostic combines yeast surface display and agglutination. Surface display engineers yeasts natural cell wall linked proteins to display antigens. The cells are placed in a u-shaped well settle into a dot at the bottom by default. Disease specific antibodies bridge the cells causing them to agglutinate; distinguishable by the naked eye. Preliminary work utilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae and I rebuilt the biosensor using an alternative yeast species, Pichia pastoris. It is an industrially viable yeast species that thrives in high-density bioreactors [2]; I investigated the viability of using P. pastoris.