Team: 37
School: Justice Code/International/Harrison
Area of Science: Computational biology/health
Interim: Interim Reports
Deadline: January 10, 2023
The definition of the problem
The problem on which we are focusing is: Will our hypothetical spray fortify the oral bacteria enough to prevent dysbiosis? This problem is important because my team would like to learn if we could make a spray that could prevent the spread of strep throat. In the past, people have proposed eating high fiber foods and doing aerobic exercise, to make the oral microbiota healthier and thereby prevent themselves from contracting strep throat. We inferred that if we could make a spray that could increase the ratio of good:bad bacteria then, then it would prevent the mouth from dysbiosis(more bad bacteria than good), and thus decrease the chance of a person contracting strep throat or any disease. Some of the variables that influence the problem are: the ratio of good bacteria to bad bacteria (periodontopathic) bacteria, bacterial communal diversity, genetic differences, salivary flow rates, activity of salivary proteins, innate immune factors, oral hygiene, diet, smoking, antibiotics/antimicrobial agents, and diseases, all of which affect how a person’s composition of “healthy†microbiota will look to them, with salivary flow rates and activity of salivary proteins contributing the most to maintaining and promoting a healthy oral microbiota.
We are basing our model on two variables: salivary flow rate and salivary protein activity.
To solve the problem computationally we are testing to see if our spray will increase the number of good bacteria. We will link our spray to the salivary flow rate and salivary protein activity and depending on whether those variables goes up or down the number of good bacteria will remain the same or increase.
Our plan to solve the problem computationally
First we set up two model mouths. Both mouths will start with 10^4 turtles(this represents the total number of good and bacteria in the mouth). One mouth will be our control group, and will not receive our spray while the other group will be our experimental group and will receive our spray. We will then set the good bacteria to bad bacteria ratio to 51:49, differentiating the good bacteria with green turtles and the bad bacteria with red turtles. Afterwards we will set our control group to double every 2 hours, while having the total bacteria decrease by 10% every minute. We will set the total number of bacteria in the experimental group to grow by a factor of 26.67 every two hours and decrease by 1% every minute.
Our progress researching the problem
First, we looked up what caused dysbiosis, what a healthy microbiota looks like, and what dysbiosis looks like, as well as the preventions or prescriptions for streptococcus.
The next step was the controls
The total starting bacteria in the two, mouths are 10^4
The starting good bacterium in the mouth is 51% and the starting bad bacteria in the mouth would be 49%.
The control groups are:
Salivary flow rate would 0.3ml/mm which is the rate at which the saliva flows when the mouth is not in action.
The total bacteria become more active because the proteins in your mouth are less active and this occurs at a rate of 10%
The total bacteria which double every 2 hours as stated by Dr Ndingsa Fomkong (biology scientist)
The experimental group:
The total bacteria which become 26.67 every 2 hours
The salivary flow rate of 4ml/min because this is the rate when we eat, and we can use this to know the effect of our product when the mouth most active.
The total bacteria which is seen as 1% because the bacteria becomes less active as a result of the proteins being more active.
Our progress coding
We have not started coding.
Our expected results
We anticipate that our experimental group(mouths) receiving our hypothetical spray will be more resistant to contracting strep in comparison to our control group(mouths) that are exposed to strep but do not have our hypothetical spray.
References
https://www.listerine.com/fresh-breath/good-vs-bad-oral-microbiome-bacteria
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5052503/
-Dr. Ndingsa Fomukong (Biology
https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.865/tables/1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5052503/#:~:text=The%20normal%20daily%20production%20of,chewing%20and%20other%20stimulating%20activities.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: Caia Brown