Project Description

Acne is a large problem in many individuals lives: According to a survey we took over 75% of teens with acne struggle with body image issues and mental health issues due to it. It is our goal to make kids feel more comfortable in their skin and understand why certain treatments aren’t working quickly and effectively. Biofilm prevents topical creams and antibiotics from effectively working on acne. Impacting the structure and rigidity of the biofilm is necessary for enhancing the value of acne treatments, as well as further leading to improved skin appearance and overall acne management. Our team is working to create and enzyme which can degrade the biofilm to make topicals more reliable and efficient.

As high school students, acne is a common part of our lives. It oftentimes makes teenagers like us feel self-conscious in our own skin. Topical treatments oftentimes are ineffective and antibiotics, though proven to kill bacteria in lab, takes months to be effective on skin. Our team wanted to understand why these treatments take are ineffective or take a long time to work. By researching C. acnes, we discovered bacterial biofilm to be the primary reason for unsuccessful treatment.

Our experiment involves designing and synthesizing a synthetic biofilm to test if and how the PFK1 enzyme in C acnes can degrade the biofilm. By constructing a plasmid for PFK1 we use the Design, Build, and Test cycle to create a synthetically engineered bacteria which allows us to target biofilm and synthetically degrade it.

This study aims to genetically manipulate C. acnes biofilm by breaking down carbohydrates. This will be done by using a plasmid to produce the enzyme Phosphofructokinase, a catalyst of glycolysis. Since the biofilm is made up of over 50% carbohydrates, increasing the glycolytic activity of C. acnes by inserting a catalyst will allow for degradation of the biofilm. In the future, we aim to utilize a hydrogel to be our enzymatic transporter to administer this catalyst to C. acnes.

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