Team:The Webb Schools
ABSTRACT
Depression, a common mood disorder that brings sadness and emptiness to people, often remains untreatable and requires a treatment method with minimal side effects to alleviate the pain of patients. Current treatment methods of depression are either ineffective or have side effects on patients’ physiological functioning. Through bioengineering, our team presents a novel method to reduce the severity of depression and, as our name indicates, brings light to patients’ dark world. We inserted efeB, a gene that can reduce oxidative stress, into a constructed plasmid and placed the gene into bacteria for more effective treatment purposes. Tests show that bacteria with constructed plasmid can suppress the level of MDA under 20 mmol/mg and can survive better than the bacteria without this plasmid under high hydrogen peroxide conditions. Our team believes that our product can bring effective treatment to depression.