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Biologists Program E. Coli To Patrol For Pathogens

Posted by Soulskill on from the working-on-method-to-send-it-back-in-time-to-kill-john-connor dept.

MTorrice writes "When hospital patients develop nasty, antibiotic-resistant infections, the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa is often the culprit. In a new approach to killing the pathogen, researchers genetically modified harmless Escherichia coli bacteria to detect and destroy P. aeruginosa. The E. coli spot a specific chemical released by the pathogen and then secrete a toxin to kill it (abstract)."

3 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Time has come.. by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Bacteria have been having their own wars since before humanities time. So have fungi, plants, animals....

    Here we are (hopefully) harnessing it for our own safety.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  2. Re:The Time has come.. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would (most) of the bacteria in our bodies want to disrupt the sweet gig they've got?

    We work our fool polycellular asses off trying to maintain nice, stable, internal conditions, complete with nutrients and an immune system with a vested interest in kicking out the troublemakers...

    You aren't going to find a better deal clinging to a rock somewhere.

  3. Re:Umm, this is founded by the us military by kermidge · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thanks for listing some of those things. I hadn't heard of the of jellyfish thing - that's neat stuff. The main reason I think it's good to point out what you did is it maybe can help counter the great amount of cluelessness amongst people who don't bother to look into or think about things. We live in a mental land chock full of buzzwords and phrases - nuclear, military, intelligence, cloud, etc., and I think it helps to clarify things.

    This bit with the e. coli looks interesting; one has to wonder at just how more usefully it and similar organisms and techniques might could be used.