Team:USTC-China

From 2012.igem.org

This year, USTC-China iGEMers are providing a novel immune system for engineering bacteria to fight against the bacteriophage. We hope this artificial line of defeat with gene circuits can be of practical use in fermentation industry.

Since the fermentation industry occurred, the bacteriophage has become a big threat to engineering bacteria. During mass producing dairy products, enzymes, amino acids, antibiotics and pesticides, once the bacteria are infected by bacteriophage, the results are unimaginable. The bacteria will die abnormally and the infection will spread quickly. Without any efficient action, tremendous loss will lie ahead. Nowadays, common strategies for avoiding this catastrophe is to control the condition of the fermentation strictly. Also, people keep selecting strains against phages. But all the strategies are time consuming and far from once for all.

However, the engineering bacteria 2012 USTC-China iGEMers hope to cultivate can both protect themselves when bacteriophage invades the strain and focus on producing products without consuming extra energy when their living environment is safe. In this case, the quality of fermented products can be guaranteed and the profits of fermentation industry can be enormously improved.