A team of students from Suzhou-based Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) won the gold medal at the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) held in Boston.
A total of 313 teams from Harvard, Oxford and other universities participated in the competition.
Founded in 2003 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, iGEM is the world's premier student science event in synthetic biology.
Twelve students from the department of biological sciences constructed a complex biological system by implanting basic genetic modules into the cell body, providing a new therapeutic approach for an infection of Staphylococcus aureus in the intestine.
Staphylococcus aureus is a highly toxic bacterium, which can cause severe diarrhea and even death if it infects the intestine. The abuse of antibiotics has made many of the bacteria resistant to antibiotics, so Staphylococcus aureus infections are an imminent problem in clinical treatment.
In this competition, students from XJTLU constructed an ideal strain of engineered bacteria that could secrete antimicrobial peptides to cure Staphylococcus aureus, and they ultimately succeeded.
