Engineering microbial peer pressure
Name
Engineering Microbial Peer Pressure.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
135.56 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
fab91c68ea6415276aa18d4b3659eec6
Author(s)
Johnston, Chad W.
Collins, James J.
Date Issued
September 2019
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Johnston, Chad W. and James J. Collins."Engineering microbial peer pressure." Science 365, 6457 (September 2019): 986-987 © 2019 The Authors
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Synthetic biologists aspire to reengineer the molecular basis of life to perform new-to-nature functions. Their efforts have led to the development of increasingly complex genetic circuits that have been used to create programmable cells that can serve as living diagnostics (1) and living therapeutics (2). However, these engineered organisms benefit from mutating or disabling synthetic circuits because they often impose fitness costs, thus limiting the practical applications of designer cells (3). On page 1045 of this issue, Liao et al. (4) demonstrate that an engineered ecology can be used to maintain circuit fidelity and circumvent evolutionary interference. By overlaying a network of mutually exclusive gene pairs onto bacteria with a shared circuit, three engineered strains can be used to seamlessly displace each other after serial addition to a continuous culture. Iteratively removing older bacteria eliminates potential mutants, allowing the functionality of the shared circuit to be preserved.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Medical Engineering & Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay3157
