483: Recycling Resources Raises Robustness
09/18/23 • 10 min
This episode: Adding tags to proteins to increase their degradation can help engineered bacteria grow and survive better under various conditions!
Download Episode (7.3 MB, 10.4 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Lactococcus virus sk1
Takeaways Engineering bacteria with new genetic pathways allows us to use them in many new and promising applications. Some of these are industrial fermentations, growing large quantities of bacteria to use as catalysts for production of chemicals of interest, such as biofuels. But in other cases, engineered microbes can be most useful in less controlled environments, such as the soil. In these situations, the engineering can throw off their natural metabolic balance, making them less tolerant of the stresses of such environments. In this study, a solution to this issue was tested using protein tags that signal the bacterial enzymes to degrade the engineered proteins. A variety of tags allowed for a variety of rates of degradation, allowing engineers to tune in the ideal rate. Bacteria with these engineered tags grew better in nutrient limited conditions than those without. Journal Paper: Szydlo K, Ignatova Z, Gorochowski TE. 2022. Improving the Robustness of Engineered Bacteria to Nutrient Stress Using Programmed Proteolysis. ACS Synth Biol 11:1049–1059.Other interesting stories:
Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, or RSS. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.
This episode: Adding tags to proteins to increase their degradation can help engineered bacteria grow and survive better under various conditions!
Download Episode (7.3 MB, 10.4 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Lactococcus virus sk1
Takeaways Engineering bacteria with new genetic pathways allows us to use them in many new and promising applications. Some of these are industrial fermentations, growing large quantities of bacteria to use as catalysts for production of chemicals of interest, such as biofuels. But in other cases, engineered microbes can be most useful in less controlled environments, such as the soil. In these situations, the engineering can throw off their natural metabolic balance, making them less tolerant of the stresses of such environments. In this study, a solution to this issue was tested using protein tags that signal the bacterial enzymes to degrade the engineered proteins. A variety of tags allowed for a variety of rates of degradation, allowing engineers to tune in the ideal rate. Bacteria with these engineered tags grew better in nutrient limited conditions than those without. Journal Paper: Szydlo K, Ignatova Z, Gorochowski TE. 2022. Improving the Robustness of Engineered Bacteria to Nutrient Stress Using Programmed Proteolysis. ACS Synth Biol 11:1049–1059.Other interesting stories:
Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, or RSS. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.
Previous Episode
482: Colony Concentric Clock Construction
This episode: Single-celled bacteria can act independently to create patterns and structure in their biofilm communities!
Download Episode (9.6 MB, 14.0 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Dictyostelium discoideum Skipper virus
Takeaways Large multicellular organisms like us have interesting mechanisms for using one set of genetic instructions present in all cells to form a large, complex community of many different types of cells with different structures and functions, all working together. Single-celled microbes do not have the same requirements for genetic or structural complexity, but they do often display interesting communal patterns and behaviors. In this study, bacteria growing in colonies on agar displayed a particular mechanism of pattern formation previously seen only in eukaryotes, called segmentation clock or clock and wavefront process. In this process, the cells in the colony are all acting individually without communication with each other, but nevertheless form a repeating ring structure in the colony as it grows, possibly allowing some measure of differentiation of cells that could help the community survive various challenges. Journal Paper: Chou K-T, Lee DD, Chiou J, Galera-Laporta L, Ly S, Garcia-Ojalvo J, Süel GM. 2022. A segmentation clock patterns cellular differentiation in a bacterial biofilm. Cell 185:145-157.e13.Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, or RSS. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook.
Next Episode
484: Bacteriophages Boost Brains
This episode: Certain phages in the gut are linked with increases in performance on some cognitive tests!
Download Episode (7.5 MB, 10.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces bikiniensis
Takeaways Our gut microbiota includes a large number of viruses, mostly bacteriophages. These fall into two groups, the lytic kind that infects and reproduces itself immediately in a host, and the lysogenic kind that can integrate its genome into the host bacterial genome and remain dormant for long periods. In this study, a higher proportion of lysogenic phages was correlated with increased performance on cognitive tests in multiple species. In humans, men showed a small increase in some tests and women in others. In mice and fruit flies, transplant or ingestion of phages was linked to increased memory performance. Journal Paper: Mayneris-Perxachs J, Castells-Nobau A, Arnoriaga-Rodríguez M, Garre-Olmo J, Puig J, Ramos R, Martínez-Hernández F, Burokas A, Coll C, Moreno-Navarrete JM, Zapata-Tona C, Pedraza S, Pérez-Brocal V, Ramió-Torrentà L, Ricart W, Moya A, Martínez-García M, Maldonado R, Fernández-Real J-M. 2022. Caudovirales bacteriophages are associated with improved executive function and memory in flies, mice, and humans. Cell Host Microbe 30:340-356.e8.Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!
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