Engineering the human skin microbiome to degrade volatile mosquito attractants

Our goal is to engineer commensal bacterial strains from the human skin microbiome to degrade or convert volatile mosquito attractants. Having compiled a comprehensive list of volatile mosquito attractants previously, we have successfully designed and tested several generalized pathways that are theoretically capable of degrading >80% of the human volatilome. Initial degradation screens were conducted in plasmid-based systems within E. coli to optimize screening conditions and test the validity of our designs. Bacteria incorporating our designed plasmids were shown to significantly enhance the degradation rate of select metabolites, including verified attractants. We then proceeded to genomically incorporate our engineered pathways into Staphylococcus epidermidis using the previously established mini-ICE method. Degradation assays are currently ongoing, but preliminary results have demonstrated observable enhancement of the engineered strains to metabolize identified mosquito attractants.