Holmes, Douglas

Ebolavirus is responsible for a deadly hemorrhagic fever that has claimed thousands of
lives in Africa and could become a global health threat. Because of the danger of
infection, novel Ebola research is restricted to BSL-4 laboratories; this slows progress
due to both the cost and expertise required to operate these laboratories. The development
of a safe surrogate would speed research and reduce risk to researchers.
Two highly conserved Ebola gene segments—from the glycoprotein and
nucleoprotein genes—were designed with modifications preventing expression while
maintaining sequence integrity, spliced into high copy number plasmids, cloned into
E.coli, and tested for stability, safety, and potential research applications. The surrogates
were stable over 2-3 months, had a negligible mutation rate (<0.165% over the
experiment), and were detectable in human blood down to 5.8E3-1.17E4 surrogates/mL.
These protocols could be used to safely simulate other pathogens and promote infectious
disease treatment and detection research.

Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) is a devastating illness with
high infectivity and mortality rates. The 2014 West African
EVD outbreak was unprecedented in case numbers
and fatalities, and has highlighted the need to
develop rapid Point of Care detection devices. Progress
in the diagnosis and treatment of highly virulent
pathogens like the Ebola virus is often limited by the
small number of labs adequately equipped to handle
them. This study is one of the first to aim at developing
a non-pathogenic bacterium surrogate, containing
a stable EBV gene for subsequent detection studies.
Our approach entailed the use of synthetic biology,
to design a recombinant vector containing the Ebola
virus glycoprotein (GP) gene. The synthetic gene was
spliced into a E.coli pUC19 plasmid vector by ligation
and subsequently transformed into competent E. coli
by cloning techniques. This Ebola virus surrogate will
assist in further Ebola diagnostic platform design and
testing.

The 3MT® competition celebrates the exciting research conducted by graduate students. Developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), the exercise cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills. The competition supports their capacity to effectively explain their research in three minutes, in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. The first 3MT® competition was held at the University of Queensland in 2008 with 160 students competing. In 2009 and 2010 the 3MT® competition was promoted to other Australian and New Zealand universities and enthusiasm for the concept grew. Since 2011, the popularity of the competition has increased and 3MT® competitions are now held in over 170 universities across more than 18 countries worldwide.