UC San Diego synthetic biologists redesign the way bacteria “talk” to each other

Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have redesigned how harmless E. coli bacteria “talk” to each other. The new genetic circuit could become a useful new tool for synthetic biologists who, as a field, are looking for ways to better control the bacteria they engineer to perform all sorts of tasks, including drug delivery, bioproduction of valuable compounds, and environmental sensing.

What’s new about the UC San Diego control strategy of the E. coli that serve as workhorses of synthetic biology? The bacterial cells within a population are engineered to be unable to communicate with each other through chemical signals unless one particular external molecule is present.

This work is published in the March 4, 2020 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

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Synthetic biology,microfluidics,Women in engineering,UC San Diego,Bioengineering,