Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have unveiled new
biosensors that enable scientists to more effectively control and 'communicate
with' engineered bacteria.
(August 4, 2015) Super
productive factories of the future could employ fleets of genetically
engineered bacterial cells, such as common E. coli, to produce valuable
chemical commodities in an environmentally friendly way. By leveraging their
natural metabolic processes, bacteria could be re–programmed to convert readily
available sources of natural energy into pharmaceuticals, plastics and fuel
products.
"The basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution
to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals," said Wyss Core Faculty
member George Church, Ph.D., who is a pioneer in the converging fields of synthetic
biology, metabolic engineering, and genetics. Church is the Robert Winthrop
Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health
Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT.
Critical to this process of metabolically engineering microbes
is the use of biosensors. Made of a biological component — such as a
fluorescent protein — and a 'detector' that responds to the presence of a
specific chemical, biosensors act as the switches and levers that turn
programmed functions on and off inside the engineered cells. They also can be
used to detect which microbial 'workers' are producing the most voluminous
amounts of a desired chemical. In this way, they can be thought of as the
medium for two–way communication between humans and cells.