{"id":6526,"date":"2019-12-10T14:16:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T07:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/?p=6526"},"modified":"2019-12-10T14:16:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T07:16:55","slug":"this-microbe-no-longer-needs-to-eat-food-to-grow-thanks-to-a-bit-of-genetic-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/this-microbe-no-longer-needs-to-eat-food-to-grow-thanks-to-a-bit-of-genetic-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"This microbe no longer needs to eat food to grow, thanks to a bit of genetic engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Synthetic biologists have performed a biochemical switcheroo. They\u2019ve re-engineered a bacterium that normally eats a diet of simple sugars into one that builds its cells by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2<\/sub>), much like plants. The work could lead to engineered microbes that suck CO<sub>2<\/sub> out of the air and turn it into medicines and other high-value compounds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Biologists typically break the world up into two types of organisms: autotrophs and heterotrophs. The former, mainly plants and some bacteria, mostly use photosynthesis to convert CO<sub>2<\/sub> into sugars and other organic compounds they need to build their cells. Most everything else, including us, gets those building blocks from the organisms they consume.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Synthetic biologists have long tried to engineer plants and autotrophic bacteria to produce valuable chemicals and fuels from water and CO<sub>2<\/sub>, because it has the potential to be cheaper than other routes. But so far they\u2019ve been far more successful at getting the heterotrophic bacterium <em>Escherichia coli <\/em>&#8211; known to most people as the microbe that lives in our guts and sometimes triggers food poisoning &#8211; to produce ethanol and other desired chemicals more cheaply than other approaches.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Scientists have previously developed dozens of tools to manipulate <em>E. coli\u2019<\/em>s genes so that it produces different compounds, such as pharmaceuticals and fuels. That means researchers should be able to insert these changes into autotrophic <em>E. coli<\/em> that eat formate, which is readily made by zapping CO<sub>2<\/sub> in water with electricity. As a result, formate produced from wind and solar power could help engineered bacteria make ethanol and other fuels, or pharmaceuticals, such as the malaria-fighting drug artemisinin.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6523\" src=\"http:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"699\" height=\"393\" srcset=\"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p.jpg 699w, https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p-260x146.jpg 260w, https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p-50x28.jpg 50w, https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Ecoli_1280p-133x75.jpg 133w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 699px) 100vw, 699px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>An engineered version of this Escherichia coli bacterium gets all the carbon it needs to grow from carbon dioxide, just like plants<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">(Kwangshin Kim\/Science Source)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Original published by sciencemag with slightly modification<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synthetic biologists have performed a biochemical switcheroo. They\u2019ve re-engineered a bacterium that normally eats a diet of simple<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[163,162],"class_list":["post-6526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-technology","tag-hue-university","tag-institute-of-biotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huib.hueuni.edu.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}