Students from the first year Bsc. Nanobiology have made this final exercise for the course Biomolecular Programming. They have designed a program in the programming language Java that simulates the process called Netosis, used by neutrophils to kill bacteria with their DNA.
Neutrophils are immune cells that kill bacteria. They have several ways of doing so. In this final Exercise two of its strategies will be simulated:
- Neutrophils kill bacteria that are very close to it by internalising the bacterium and degrade it.
- Neutrophils can throw out a fibrous network of its DNA. The DNA is covered with antimicrobial proteins. Bacteria stick to these fibrous DNA-networks and die. In addition, antimicrobial proteins release from the NET and spread out by diffusion, killing bacteria. The DNA fibrous network is termed a NET (neutrophil extracellular trap). The process is called netosis. Due to losing their DNA, neutrophils die.
In reality the NET also releases antimicrobial proteins but and the Neutrophil can chase a bacterium via chemotaxis, these elements are not included in the simulation.
Students that took the effort to add biological relevant creative or extra elements to the final assignment or with outstanding code are listed below showing their simulations.
Hereby we present the best programs of the year 2018 in random order: