https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/d855e30b-1fde-4b64-802a-b74929a026f9 Title: ATHENA: Microbiome Engineering for Recurrent UTIs Description: Every year, more than 400 million people, mostly women, suffer from urinary tract infections. The enemy is UPEC (Uropathogenic E. coli), a bacterium that invades the cells of the bladder epithelium and hides inside them, forming intracellular bacterial communities that antibiotics cannot reach. The infection returns, more antibiotics are prescribed, and the cycle repeats. Instead of eliminating the pathogen, what if we could render it harmless? ATHENA is a microbiome engineering therapy applied to recurrent UTIs, delivered in a single endoscopic session. Like the goddess, it carries a shield -our probiotic E. coli ABU 83972 strain- and a spear -a synthetic conjugative plasmid that transfers into UPEC and activates on invasion, disarming it through three anti-virulence mechanisms: an inhibitory peptide that disrupts signal transduction in critical two-component systems, an antisense RNA that hinders intracellular survival, and an engineered encapsulin nanocage that sequesters iron. Finally, the owl: NOCTUA is our browser-based software suite that opens up the computational pipeline behind our construct design. Researchers or future teams can use Noctua to adapt our framework to other microbiome-related infections, create their own binders, asRNA sequences and more. iGEM Thessaly 2026 Wiki | Official Page Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:21:36 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.igem.org https://video.igem.org/client/assets/images/icons/icon-1500x1500.png https://video.igem.org/videos/watch/d855e30b-1fde-4b64-802a-b74929a026f9 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.igem.org/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.