Collaborative Research: Plant-based Pathogen Filters

饮用水中的病毒污染会导致疾病。尽管此类水媒疾病对公众健康构成重大威胁，但目前适用于去除病毒的过滤技术成本和能源要求都很高。这阻止了它们的广泛使用，并导致需要更便宜和可持续的饮用水消毒替代品。该项目的目标是使用计算生物学工具来发现可以捕获病毒的植物性多肽，从而创造出低成本和节能的饮用水过滤器。将评估扩大规模的潜力，以了解常见水成分对病毒-蛋白质相互作用的影响，以改善可持续和有效的过滤操作。创建大型植物多肽数据库将为其他科学学科提供广泛的信息，并可通过互联网资源轻松获取，作为该项目的一部分。成功开发以植物为基础的水生物过滤器将有一系列潜在的应用，包括更换老化的基础设施和在救灾情况下使用。更广泛地说，低成本过滤器通过改善清洁饮用水的获取，在全球范围内具有显著减少水源性疾病死亡的潜力。人类肠道病毒造成的水污染是全世界急性腹泻、住院和死亡的主要原因之一。这些病毒的去除可以通过过滤和其他水处理技术实现。虽然过滤是饮用水处理中应用最广泛的技术之一，但近几十年来，过滤方面的创新相对较少。该项目的目标是开发可持续、可伸缩的过滤器，该过滤器使用被称为抗菌肽(AMPs)的可持续植物材料来实现功能。为实现该项目目标而设计的具体目标侧重于了解基本的生物分子和物理化学相互作用，以达到以下目的：1)通过计算确定优先结合病毒衣壳蛋白的植物来源AMP，用于植物病原体过滤器；2)通过实验室对腺病毒2、轮状病毒OSU株和杜兰病毒(人类诺沃克病毒的替代品)的去除测试，验证选定的AMP；3)确定容易获得的底物和可根据一系列应用定制的可行过滤器配置；以及4)量化过滤器表面、病毒和水基质成分之间的相互作用和干扰，以便能够在现场进行翻译。这些研究目标的成功完成将导致开发一个数据驱动的框架，用于创建和评估基于AMP的材料。此外，低成本高效的植物病原体过滤器通过广泛采用该技术，有可能在全球范围内减少水传播疾病。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Viral contamination of drinking water can cause disease. Although such waterborne diseases pose significant public health threats, current filtration technologies suitable for virus removal have high cost and energy requirements. This prevents their widespread use and has led to the need for less expensive and sustainable alternatives for disinfecting drinking water. The goal of this project is to use computational biology tools to discover plant-based peptides that can trap viruses to create low-cost and energy-efficient drinking water filters. The potential for scale up will be assessed to understand the impacts of common water constituents on virus-protein interactions to improve sustainable and effective filter operation. Creation of a large database of plant peptides will be broadly informative to other scientific disciplines and easily accessible via internet resource to be developed as part of this project. Successful development of plant-based water biofilters will have a range of potential applications including the replacement of aging infrastructure and use in disaster relief situations. More broadly, low cost filters have significant potential to decrease waterborne disease deaths worldwide through improved access to clean drinking water. Water contamination with human enteric viruses is one of the leading causes of acute diarrhea hospitalization and fatalities worldwide. Removal of these viruses can be achieved through filtration and other water treatment technologies. Although filtration has been one of the most widely used techniques for drinking water treatment, there has been comparatively little innovation in filtration in recent decades. The goal of this project is to develop sustainable, scalable filters functionalized with sustainable plant material known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Specific objectives designed to achieve the project goal focus on understanding the fundamental biomolecular and physicochemical interactions to: 1) Computationally identify plant-derived AMPs that preferentially bind viral capsid proteins for use in plant-based pathogen filters; 2) Validate chosen AMPs using lab removal tests with the enteric viruses Adenovirus 2, Rotavirus OSU strain, and Tulane virus (a surrogate for human norovirus); 3) Identify readily available substrates and feasible filter configurations that can be tailored to a range of applications; and 4) Quantify interactions and interferences between filter surfaces, viruses, and water matrix components to enable translation to the field scale. Successful completion of these research objectives will lead to the development of a data-driven framework for creating and evaluating AMP-based materials. Further, low cost-effective plant-based pathogen filters have the potential to reduce waterborne disease worldwide through widespread adoption of the technology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.