Talk:CH391L/S12/HostOrganisms

Why would you choose certain chassis over others? Pros and cons of each?*Brian Renda 17:35, 13 February 2012 (EST):

• Michael Hammerling 14:49, 15 February 2012 (EST): Added description of Acenitobacter and a link to that paper.

Acinetobacter needs love. I can write up a short piece on it, otherwise here's a good paper. [1].*Brian Renda 17:35, 13 February 2012 (EST):

• Jeffrey E. Barrick 22:30, 13 February 2012 (EST): I want to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of yeast.

• Yi Kou 02:22, 14 February 2012 (EST): me too.

• Michael Hammerling 12:52, 20 February 2012 (EST): Done

• Jeremy R. McLain 18:58, 16 February 2012 (EST): So we can use various host organisms to replicate a gene of interest in a plasmid that we transform into the that organism. In the case of E. coli, you mentioned the strain we use in the lab can no longer survive in our bodies, so it shouldn't be much of a biohazard. Is that because people have manipulated its genes or is that just some particular strain found naturally?

• Jeffrey E. Barrick 22:11, 18 February 2012 (EST):Many lab strains have lost certain genes needed for survival in natural environments. For E. coli, some strains have been in the lab for over a hundred years! (If you're into microbiology history-adventure stories, I recommend the book Microbe Hunters [2]) Sometimes they just lose regions of the genome that have genes necessary for survival in harsh environments because they are inherently unstable during replication. Sometimes strains that lose certain genes actually have an advantage over the "natural" strain and will outgrow and displace them in the lab. For example, some E. coli strains apparently became non-motile because it is costly to make flagella, and they have no use when grown in well-shaken flasks, so mutants displaced the motile ancestor at some point when they were grown in the lab and re-streaked to single colonies. Many pathogens also lose virulence factors when propagated in lab. This is the basis of "attenuated" vaccines.
• Jeffrey E. Barrick 22:20, 18 February 2012 (EST):You can never be too safe regarding the release of recombinant DNA into the environment. Even if our E. coli didn't survive outside the lab (which is not guaranteed), its DNA might be taken up by other organisms by horizontal gene transfer.

• Adam Meyer 12:09, 19 February 2012 (EST): How about something about different kinds of E. coli. Specifically cloning strains vs expression strains.

• Jeffrey E. Barrick 09:16, 20 February 2012 (EST):That's an awesome idea, and a very important thing to pay attention to.

• Michael Hammerling 12:51, 20 February 2012 (EST): Done

• Midhat Patel 13:02, 27 February 2012 (EST): Has there been any success using more complex eukaryotic organisms for genome integration? We used NIH3T3 cells in my last lab and added genes that coded for shRNA for the genes we were trying to knock out. Also, this may sound like a stupid question, but how exactly is DNA transfected into eukaryotic cells?

References

1. Metzgar D, Bacher JM, Pezo V, Reader J, Döring V, Schimmel P, Marlière P, and de Crécy-Lagard V. Acinetobacter sp. ADP1: an ideal model organism for genetic analysis and genome engineering. Nucleic Acids Res. 2004;32(19):5780-90. DOI:10.1093/nar/gkh881 |

   Acinetobacter sp. ADP1: an ideal model organism for genetic analysis and genome engineering.

2. ISBN:0156027771

   Adventure-history of early microbiology.