An engineered strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli can sense the presence of the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and produce a toxin to kill it.
Chueh Loo Poh, Matthew Wook Chang and their colleagues at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore engineered E. coli to make a protein that binds to signalling molecules released by P. aeruginosa. The resulting complex activates two gene systems that the authors had introduced into E. coli: one creates the toxin pyocin, which kills P. aeruginosa; the other generates a protein that causes E. coli cells to burst, releasing the toxin.
When these E. coli were cultured together with P. aeruginosa, they killed 99% of the target bacteria.
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Bacteria engineered to kill. Nature 477, 9 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/477009b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/477009b
