Symphony and synchrony of bacterial time keeping machines
2010 January 22
One of the coolest videos I ever seen, demonstrating the enormous potential of synthetic biology. Its nearly 10 years since the advent of the synthetic biology and the very first synthetic biological oscillator. Despite all challenges and hypes synthetic biology is now in delivery mode. Now researchers from University of California, San Diego have programmed the bacterial cells using engineered genetic circuits in such a way that it allows entire bacterial colony to syncrinze their time keeping clocks in a same fashion as we humans do. Each bacterial cell has its own time keeping clock and normally these cells use the quorum sensing to communicate with each other which involves cell secreted chemical signaling molecules called autoinducers and receptor that can specifically detect the signaling molecule (inducer). Bacterial cells use quorum sensing to coordinate certain behaviors based on the local density of the bacterial population such as symbiosis, virulence, competence, conjugation, antibiotic production, motility, sporulation, and biofilm formation. In this ground breaking work which is published in recent issue of Nature Jeff Hasty and colleagues have synchronized clocks of bacterial using various quorum-sensing factors and inhibitors such as acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL).
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Symphony and synchrony of bacterial time keeping machines http://bit.ly/4W4Juj
Symphony and synchrony of bacterial time keeping machines http://bit.ly/4W4Juj #fisheye
cool initiative, thanks!
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