Postgraduate scholarship – David Stephenson: Delivery of therapeutic protei

Summary

Postgraduate scholarship to study ways to improve the health of chickens through genetic engineering of commensal species such as Lactobacillus.

Program

Chicken Meat

Research Organisation

Australian National University

Objective Summary

The proejct aims to deliver theapeutic proteins to the gastrointestinal tract of chickens targeting Clostridium perfringens using strains of Lactobacillus and will involve: a) isolating and characterising a large number of Lactobacillus strains from the chicken gastrointestinal tract b) identifying persistent strains by tracking marked strains in chickens c) genetically engineering persistent strains to product antimicrobial peptides and other potentially therapeutic proteins d) testing the performance of these engineered strains in animal disease models.