ENGINEERING POLYMERIC ARTIFICIAL CELLULAR ENVIROMENTS (PACES) FOR ADHESION AND QUORUM SENSING

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V. cholerae is the causative agent of cholera, a disease that affects 3-5 million people and causes 100,000-130,000 deaths/year. V. cholerae uses QS to control pathogenicity and the expression of virulence factors. Unlike many other pathogens, V. cholerae uses QS to repress virulence traits such as toxin production and host attachment. This way the pathogen coordinates host decolonization and environmental dissemination following infection. Small molecules designed to agonize QS result in repression of these virulence factors, compromising the ability of V. cholerae to colonise the host and cause acute diarrheal disease. However, this comes at the expense of increasing the ability of V. cholerae to spread to other hosts, compromising containment of the disease. It is therefore desirable to develop agents that inhibit the expression of the virulence factors while containing the pathogen, through clustering, and facilitating its mechanical removal from contaminated water, for instance. But to do this, we need to develop an understanding of how chemical functionality and material properties (e.g. molecular mass) affect the microbiology of the pathogen. In particular, we are interested in identifying how these materials properties can modulate the expression of relevant V. cholerae phenotypes, including those associated with virulence.