Team UFLORIDA Contribution
Our in silico model has provided a base for research that can be used by iGEM teams studying sepsis for years to come. This model can not only be used to output expected trends of immune cells and biomarkers, but can be adjusted to test different hypotheses. For example, if a team were to study sepsis on an animal model, and wanted to predict what would happen if they induced chronic sepsis on the animal, then they could use our model to determine what relative level of pathogen they should give the animal in order to produce this outcome. If they wanted to test stem cell treatment in their animal model, then they could determine their initial pathogen level with our model, and also artificially increase the HSPC level at a certain time interval, to see how it might affect the animal model. This in vitro model has many opportunities for future iGEM teams that have a desire to study the causes and effects of sepsis. The ability to vary initial immune cell/pathogen levels while being able to immediately see the predicted trend backed by known biological mechanisms can be incredibly useful for one exploring how they think their in vivo or in vitro sepsis model should look.
Our in vitro model is also a novel approach that will expand the scientific community’s understanding of sepsis. Through integrating a preexisting organoid model established by Dr. Abdullah O. Khan with literature review and coupling it with our in silico model, we could identify ways to induce a septic state ex vivo and model immune system trends during sepsis. Future iGEM teams that hope to study sepsis can use what we have found in both the failure and successes of our lab notebook, along with our in silico model, to further research in the field of sepsis.
Figure 1. Mechanistic model used to build in silico model.