{"id":111944,"date":"2020-08-26T12:26:44","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T19:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/a-kill-switch-for-rogue-microbes"},"modified":"2020-08-26T12:26:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T19:26:44","slug":"a-kill-switch-for-rogue-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/a-kill-switch-for-rogue-microbes","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018Kill Switch\u2019 for Rogue Microbes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-kill-switch-for-rogue-microbes.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Biologists often speak of switching genes on and off to give microbes new abilities\u2013like producing biofuels or drugs, or gobbling up environmental toxins. For the most part, though, it\u2019s nearly impossible to turn off a gene without deleting it (which means you can\u2019t turn it on again). This limits biologists\u2019 ability to control how much of a particular protein a microbe produces. It also restricts bioengineers\u2019 ability to design new microbes.<\/p>\n<p>Now researchers at Boston University, led by biomedical engineering professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/bme\/people\/primary\/collins\/\" target=\"_blank\">James Collins<\/a>, have developed a highly tunable genetic \u201cswitch\u201d that offers a greater degree of control over microbes. It makes it possible to stop the production of a protein and restart it again. The switch, which could be used to control any gene, can also act as a \u201cdimmer switch\u201d to finely tune how much protein a microbe would produce over time.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers made a highly effective microbe \u201ckill switch\u201d to demonstrate the precision of the approach. For years, researchers have been trying to develop these self-destruction mechanisms to allay concerns that genetically engineered microbes might prove impossible to eradicate once they\u2019ve outlived their usefulness. But previous kill switches haven\u2019t offered tight enough control to pass governmental regulatory muster because it was difficult to make it turn on in all the cells in a population at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biologists often speak of switching genes on and off to give microbes new abilities\u2013like producing biofuels or drugs, or gobbling up environmental toxins. For the most part, though, it\u2019s nearly impossible to turn off a gene without deleting it (which means you can\u2019t turn it on again). This limits biologists\u2019 ability to control how much [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}