Welcome to the ABAtE Project!
Active Bacteriophages for American FoulBrood Eradication
The ABAtE Project is hosted at the Hendrickson Lab in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury.
We are working towards discovering and characterising a set of bacteriophages that can be used to destory American FoulBrood, a disease of honeybees that is caused by the bacterial pathogen Paenibacillus larvae.
Bacteriophages are viruses that are specific to bacteria. In the USA it has been shown that bacteriophage cocktails can provide a protective effect which prevents infection of the hive by P. larvae.
About us: The chief scientist on this project is Dr Heather Hendrickson and the primary scientist in the laboratory is postdoctoral researcher Dr Danielle Kok.
Bacteriophages are the natural parasites of Bacteria. They are the most numeous entity on the planet, estimated at 10^31 (ten times more than the number of bacteria). Bacteriophages are simple. All bacteriophages have a protein based "head" or "capsid" that encapsulates a nucleic acid molecule like DNA or RNA that bears the instructions for making the bacteriophage particle. Many bacteriophages also have a tail or base plate that enables them to recognize their target bacterium and inject their genetic information into their prey. Infection can produce 100s of copies of the bacteriophage, each of which is able to go on and repeat this process. Bacteriophages are generally highly specific in the bacterial hosts that they target.
Contact the ABAtE team: danielle.kok@canterbury.ac.nz
The ABAtE project is currently supported by:
