bacterial cells carrying synthetic dual-function operon survived starvation细菌细胞携带合成双重职能操纵子饥饿幸存下来.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology Volume 2011, Article ID 489265, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2011/489265 Research Article Bacterial Cells Carrying Synthetic Dual-Function Operon Survived Starvation Yuki Matsumoto,1 Yoichiro Ito,1 Saburo Tsuru,1 Bei-Wen Ying,1 and Tetsuya Yomo1, 2, 3 1 Department of Bioinformatics Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, 1-5 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan 2 Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, 1-5 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan 3 Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Saitama 332-0012, Japan Correspondence should be addressed to Tetsuya Yomo, yomo@ist.osaka-u.ac.jp Received 30 May 2011; Accepted 1 September 2011 Academic Editor: George E. Plopper Copyright © 2011 Yuki Matsumoto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A synthetic dual-function operon with a bistable structure was designed and successfully integrated into the bacterial genome. Bistability was generated by the mutual inhibitory structure comprised of the promoters Ptet and Plac and the repressors LacI and TetR. Dual function essential for cell growth was introduced by replacing the genes (i.e., hisC and leuB) encoding proteins involved in the biosynthesis of histidine and leucine from their native chromosomal locations to the synthetic operon. Both colony formation and population dynamics of the cells carrying this operon showed that the cells survived starvation and the newly formed p