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Dental plaque is an extremely annoying and harmful oral disease. As people pay more attention to tooth protection, more and more tooth protection methods are being developed. In the COVID-19 pandemic, people cannot easily go to the dentist to check their teeth. THIS-China has designed and engineered an E. coli detection method to detect the harmful bacteria S. mutans in the patient’s mouth. Using this method, the patient can easily check their oral health without the need for lengthy hospital checks. In the end, we hope to reduce the prevalence of dental plaque worldwide.

Prevention & Detection

Detecting diseases such as dental plaque at an early stage is extremely important. If dental plaque can be detected at an early stage, the patient can start doing a better job of brushing their teeth and use proper tools to clean their teeth, killing the harmful bacteria S. mutans before dental plaque forms on their teeth. Therefore, we have used the quorum sensing signaling system of engineered S. mutans degrade red color to show the patients the amount of harmful bacteria in their mouth, which can be seen with the naked eye.

Implementation

To implement our project in the real world, we developed a hardware that can carry our engineered cell safely without any direct contact with the outside world. The user only has to fill the tube with the oral rinse after brushing the teeth and wait for around 24 hours to see the result.

Human Practices

In order to create a broader awareness and a better product, we surveyed people’s preferences and opinions, talked with and interviewed professional dentists, and gave several lessons to the public. From those experiences, we collect suggestions and integrated them into our project.

Figure 1: Human practices.

Safety

Our team fully follows the safety rules of the iGEM competition. The hardware we designed will prevent the engineered bacteria from leaking into and harming the environment. We have also been trained and supervised by lab instructors to ensure our safety.

Hardware

Figure 2: This is our product's hardware.

Genetic Circuit

Figure 3: The genetic circuit for our product.

Dental Plague

Figure 4: Dental Plaque.

Team:THIS-China