Team:WHU-China

What are those red things on my face ? ! I really want to get rid of it.

I'm clearly not an adolescent, am I? !

Is acne essential in adolescence …

Is it because you took me to a barbecue yesterday?

Probably because I stayed up late again yesterday. :(

Am I getting younger again?

Many of our teammates, as well as their friends and family members have been troubled by acne.
When synthetic biology encountered such problems in our daily life, our project was born …

In 2019, among the consumers suffering from acne in China, 127 million were middle school students, 133 million were college students, and 294 million were white-collar workers over 25 years old. Acne is a common skin problem among people.

Generally speaking, acne is related to pores being blocked by oil and Propionibacterium acnes proliferating in such an anaerobic environment. Our project aims at acne caused by such factors and hopes to develop a drug for acne treatment with more convenience and less side effects.

Our engineered bacteria can not only decompose fatty acids destroying the anaerobic environment, but also secrete bacteriocin to kill Propionibacterium acnes directly. At the same time, we have designed a directed evolution pipeline for fatty acids-sensing system, enabling precise therapeutics actuation only in appropriate conditions, minimizing the side effects of leakage of gene expression. Additionally, autotrophic E. coli strain is used for the biosafety.

We hope that Acneraser will build new bridges between acne research and synthetic biology, letting this promising and exciting scientific field change our lives from the very tiny things around us all.

----WHU-China