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Bacteria Made Fluorescent in Unison for LED-Like Display

Microfluidic chip used in floursescent bacteria research (Hasty Lab, UC San Diego)

Microfluidic chip used in fluorescent bacteria research (Hasty Lab, UC San Diego)

Researchers at University of California in San Diego have created a process for giving bacteria the ability to glow simultaneously in a colony, much like a neon sign. This discovery, which has commercial applications and for which a patent has been filed, is described this week in the advanced online issue of the journal Nature (paid subscription required).

San Diego biology professor Jeff Hasty and colleagues attached a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of millions of E. coli cells, and synchronized the biological clocks of the bacteria within a colony. The team then synchronized thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison.

The researchers discovered that each of the bacterial colonies emit gases that, when shared among the thousands of other colonies within a specially designed microfluidic chip (pictured left), can synchronize all of the millions of bacteria in the chip. Graduate students Arthur Prindle, Phillip Samayoa, and Ivan Razinkov designed the microfluidic chips, the largest of which contains 50 to 60 million bacterial cells and is about the size of a paper clip.

Each of the blinking bacterial colonies comprise what the San Diego researchers call a “biopixel,” an individual point of light much like the pixels on a computer monitor or television screen. Larger microfluidic chips contain about 13,000 biopixels, while smaller chips designed by the team, about one-tenth the size of the larger chips, contain about 500 pixels.

In addition to creating flashing lights for a future display at Times Square or the Ginza, the San Diego researchers tested their discovery as a sensor to detect the low-level presence of arsenic. They found that as a biological sensor, decreases in the frequency of the oscillations of the cells’ blinking pattern indicate the presence and amount of the arsenic poison.

Sensors of this kind built on biological components offer an important advantage over chemical-based sensor, namely their ability to continuously monitor for heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms over time. Many chemical-based sensors can be used only once, since the test targets can change the nature of the chemicals in the sensor.

“Because the bacteria respond in different ways to different concentrations by varying the frequency of their blinking pattern,” says Hasty, “they can provide a continual update on how dangerous a toxin or pathogen is at any one time.”

The UC San Diego Technology Transfer Office has filed a patent application on the team’s invention and is seeking partners for licensing and commercializing the technology. The following video produced by Hasty’s lab tells more about the research and its use as a biosensor.

 

Read more: Antibody-Based Biosensor Aids Environmental Cleanups

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