Cosmetic Guanine Synthesis Stockholm iGEM

Purpose and goal:

The purpose of the project is to innovate a sustainable and ethical alternative for producing guanine crystals, widely used in the cosmetics industry. Our objective is to use synthetic biology to genetically modify bacteria, facilitating environmentally friendly guanine crystal production. We aim to address the significant environmental and ethical issues associated with current methods, which rely on fish scale harvesting and mining.

By engineering both A. caviae and E. coli strains to enhance guanine crystal synthesis, we seek to create a viable, scalable production process. Expected results and effects:

We anticipate that our project will lead to the successful creation of a genetically modified bacterial system capable of producing guanine crystals in an industrial setting. This innovation is expected to provide a vegan alternative to fish-derived guanine and a more environmentally friendly solution compared to mining practices. The successful implementation of our genetic modifications will pay the way for future demonstration of the feasibility of industrial-scale production of guanine crystals using synthetic biology.

Approach and implementation:

In the research phase, we will focus on genetically modifying Aeromonas caviae and Escherichia coli to enhance guanine crystal production. This involves transfecting the bacteria with plasmids carrying the guanine synthesis pathway genes guaA and guaB, and in the case of E. coli, silencing the guaD and xhd genes using a homologous recombination knockout system. We hope to further enhance gene expression by introducing a selected promoter and enhancer sequences.