Abstract
Sense and sensibility: of synthetic biology and the redesign of bioreporter circuits.
Highlights
It is tempting to speculate that sixty years ago, when Jacob and Monod presented their model of the lac operon (Jacob and Monod, 1961), they already had a glimpse of the future of the lacZ gene, as encoding a cleaver of disaccharides, nor as a component in a beautiful and groundbreaking model of gene regulation, and as a universal reporter of gene activation
Reporter gene technology rapidly became a basic tool in studying the regulation of gene expression; several decades had to pass, before the same approach has led to the first report of a microorganism genetically engineered to perform an accurate, specific and sensitive analysis of an environmental pollutant (King et al, 1990)
This publication was trailed by the first E. coli-based mercury sensor (Selifonova et al, 1993), soon to be followed by numerous others, all sharing the same basic structure: a gene promoter induced by the target compound, fused downstream of a reporter gene
Summary
It is tempting to speculate that sixty years ago, when Jacob and Monod presented their model of the lac operon (Jacob and Monod, 1961), they already had a glimpse of the future of the lacZ gene, as encoding a cleaver of disaccharides, nor as a component in a beautiful and groundbreaking model of gene regulation, and as a universal reporter of gene activation. Looking back over the last 15 years, possibly the most powerful innovator of microbial biosensor design was the coming of age of synthetic biology.
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