Team:WHU-China/Prospect
Although we have accomplished a lot in year 2021’s work, there are still many things to do to make our project more efficient and reliable. Due to the limitation of time, we left some adjustments and further experiments unfinished, which limit our project from getting support from medical companies and processing commercialization. We hope that with future developments we can not only make our Acneraser safe and efficient, but also let it become a novel product and really make some difference to the current situation of acne treatment.
Directed Evolution Module
Compared with present method, flow cytometry is much more powerful in selecting mutations in favor of our design. We’ve designed and built hardware for epPCR and flow cytometry selection, but we haven’t got permission to use flow cytometer in former stage of our project. We believe that in the future with a much greater throughput provided by flow cytometry, we will be able to get a sequence that meets our need.
Fatty Acid Consumption Module
We believe that the efficiency of decomposing fatty acid can be optimized if we balance the expression of relevant enzymes. We could use modules or software to further simulate the process of β-oxidation or the energy flow, or just try different combinations to find the optimal condition.
Inhibiting Module
Till now we have tested the function of precursor PctA, but the real activity of mature PctA remains unknown. This data is vital for our design and we will soon acquire it. Previously another problem is that the secretion of PctA still bothers us. A new design is that by expressing a new membrane protein, we will open a tunnel between outer membrane and cytosol that directly transport PctA into the environment. Finally, our engineering bacteria will go through systematical test to see if it can really inhibit P. acnes.
Safety
We are considering using E. coli strain without endotoxin to minimize the possible side effects of our engineering bacteria. We’ve also learnt that by knocking out certain gene, we can prevent E. coli from producing unpleasant smell. We will discuss the feasibility and design experiments for all these to make our project safe to mankind.
Real-world Application
We are devoted to the amplification of our project, and at the same time we never stop our effort of communicating with medical companies and make our business plan. We are applying for a patent on our design of Acneraser, and still studying what should be done before our project can be turned into a useful product. Don’t forget our final goal: address the long-standing challenge in acne treatment.
