2021-2022 STEM Sustainability Case Competition: Synthetic Biology

Michael Hamilton,Madison Packer,Ammarah Nakhuda,Kartikay Pabbi,Sarah Matta,Lyndsey De Guzman,Reece Cowan

doi:10.26685/urncst.351

Abstract

The STEM Sustainability Case Competition is an annual research case competition hosted by undergraduate students from the STEM Students Guelph Support Association (SSGSA). The mission of this competition is to provide University of Guelph undergraduate students with an opportunity to develop their own research proposal while gaining valuable experience in innovative thinking and critical research analysis. Each year students, in teams of up to three, are paired with an experienced mentor to develop and present a novel research proposal aligning with the competition’s theme. During the competition, students are taught fundamental principles outlining nine various lab techniques that they could write about in their proposal. The theme this year was creating solutions for global challenges impacting areas within synthetic biology. In the 2021-2022 STEM Sustainability Case Competition 70 total participants submitted abstracts to be adjudicated, and we present the Top 15 winning submissions to be read by you (accessed on our website: https://www.stemstudentsguelphsupportassociation.com/) in our competition abstract booklet. We hope you enjoy reading this year’s best abstract submissions and continue to take part in the growing SSGSA community as we strive to encourage interest in novel scientific research while providing an outlet to approach real-world problems creatively.

Highlights

The STEM Sustainability Case Competition is an annual research case competition hosted by undergraduate students from the STEM Students Guelph Support Association (SSGSA)
HIV-1 enters the host cell through various coreceptors conditional to the variant, where infection eventually leads to CD4+T cell cytolysis, which is cell death caused by bursting of the cell
This study will be the first to investigate the use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 in vivo gene editing to decrease demyelination in those diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis (MS) by inhibiting the methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase 2 (MTHFD2) gene in CD4+ T-cells

Summary

Introduction

The STEM Sustainability Case Competition is an annual research case competition hosted by undergraduate students from the STEM Students Guelph Support Association (SSGSA). Four sets of HIV-infected rats will be used in the study: a CRISPR-Cas9 treatment group, LASER ART treatment group, combined treatment group, and a control group. This study will be the first to investigate the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in vivo gene editing to decrease demyelination in those diagnosed with MS by inhibiting the MTHFD2 gene in CD4+ T-cells.

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