coli can tell us about the factors that dictate the success or failure of phage infection in vivo.” I specifically am interested in understanding what these data in E. coli microbes is an exciting next step that the field can now begin to tackle. Capturing transcriptional events that are not realized by traditional RNAseq in a noninvasive manner is outstanding,” said Joseph Bondy-Denomy, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. “This work is really exciting and a great breakthrough in the field. Through the analysis of bacteria isolated from fecal samples of mice on different diets, the researchers showed how the sentinel bacteria adapted their metabolism to the nutrient supply. I expect there will be many emerging applications as the technology is further refined in terms of sensitivity, temporal resolution, and resilience in open environments.” The authors showed an impressive array of uses for biological recording inside the gut of an animal. Harris Wang, PhD, an associate professor of systems biology, pathology, and cell biology at Columbia University said, “The study is a wonderful example of the power of temporal recording to detect and capture cellular environments and responses using cutting-edge CRISPR molecular machinery. We now have a tool that can reveal host and microbial physiology within the intact and unperturbed intestine.” Platt said, “Transcriptional recording sentinel cells open avenues in basic research and medicine. “This new method lets us obtain information directly from the gut, without having to disturb intestinal functions,” said Macpherson. coli in mice and analyzed bacterial DNA in fecal samples to determine how often the gut bacteria manufactured a given mRNA molecule during their passage through the gut, and which genes were activated. Each mouse model requires a different protocol in terms of how much bacteria we gavage, how we extract the recorded information from feces, and how we process the data,” explained Platt.Ĭollaborating teams led by Andrew Macpherson, PhD, a professor of gastroenterology at the University Hospital of Bern, administered the sentinel E. “In the current work, we further develop and expand the method to enable applications in different types of mouse models, including germ-free gnotobiotic mice and mice harboring a model microbiota. ![]() The basic molecular method used in this study was developed in earlier work by Platt’s team published in 20. This included a reverse transcriptase-an enzyme that transcribes RNA into DNA-along with CRISPR-associated proteins necessary for incorporating the DNA fragment into the CRISPR array. The scientists introduced the CRISPR array of the bacterial species Fusicatenibacter saccharivorans into an E. Here, bacterial mRNAs serve as blueprints that reveal which genes are being deployed to execute cellular functions as the bacteria traverses the length of the intestinal tract. coli to incorporate snippets of their own mRNA. ![]() The researchers of the current study exploited the CRISPR-Cas mechanism to enable E. The CRISPR-Cas mechanism, a kind of bacterial immune memory, enables bacteria to incorporate RNA or DNA snippets from attacking viruses into a region of their genome called the CRISPR array, allowing them to recall past viruses to stave off future attacks expeditiously. (From left to right) Randall Platt, Andrew Macpherson, Tanmay Tanna, Jakob Zimmermann, and Florian Schmidt, are authors of this study. ![]() The study was published in the journal Science, in an article titled, “Noninvasive assessment of gut function using transcriptional recording sentinel cells.” It opens new avenues for developing noninvasive, diagnostic, microbial sensors that could uncover early symptoms of intestinal disease or assess the effect of diet or therapies on health. “We developed transcriptional recording sentinel cells with the idea that they could safely traverse the gastrointestinal tract and reveal critical features of health and disease within the gut noninvasively.” Endoscopy requires fasting and purging,” said Randall Platt, PhD, senior author of the study and a professor of biological engineering at ETH Zurich. Fecal and blood measurements are indirect. There is a paucity of options for investigating host and microbe physiology in the human intestine, making the human gut a black box. “The gut and its microbiome are central to health. ![]() These arrays can then be bioinformatically analyzed to uncover physiological details of the intestinal tract and diverse microbial communities that colonize it. Using a sophisticated transcriptional recording method called Record-seq in a study conducted on mice, scientists have engineered E.coli sentinel cells so that they can generate a historical record of changes in their gene expression as they travel through the gut, by integrating DNA snippets into spacer sequences of engineered CRISPR arrays in their genomes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |