(157ab) Bacterial Expression of Moringa Oleifera Seed Proteins for Virus Filtration

The purpose of the work presented in this poster is to recombinantly produce Moringa oleifera proteins to understand their interactions with viral capsids in the context of water filtration and aerosol filtration for PPE. 785 million people around the world lack access to safe water (1). The leading cause of acute diarrhea in children are enteric viruses, which include rotavirus and norovirus (2). Recently, we showed that functionalizing a sand filter with crude water extract from Moringa seed can increase the virus removal efficiency by 7 orders of magnitude (3). A chitin binding protein, MOCBP, is thought to be responsible for the virus removal. An antimicrobial protein, MOCP, is also thought to affect the interactions. For both MOCBP and MOCP, each with the addition of a His tag, recombinant protein production was optimized in separate BL21 E. coli strains and subsequently purified using a cobalt resin column. Experiments were conducted using MS2 bacteriophage, a surrogate for human enteric viruses and respiratory viruses. Each type of purified protein was tested independently and in combination to understand the individual and synergistic effect with virus capsid. Better understanding of the protein-virus interactions can help us design better columns and PPE and hopefully extend this research to other plant antimicrobial proteins.

References:

1. UNICEF, WHO (2019) Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2017: Special focus on inequalities Available at: https://washdata.org/reports.
2. WHO (2008) Weekly epidemiological record Available at: http://www.who.int/vaccines-documents/DocsPDF02/www698.pdf.
3. Samineni L, et al. (2019) 7 Log Virus Removal in a Simple Functionalized Sand Filter. Environ Sci Technol:12706–12714.