{"id":234141,"date":"2026-03-27T03:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/new-synthetic-origin-of-replication-lets-multiple-plasmids-coexist-in-one-bacterial-cell"},"modified":"2026-03-27T03:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:19:11","slug":"new-synthetic-origin-of-replication-lets-multiple-plasmids-coexist-in-one-bacterial-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/new-synthetic-origin-of-replication-lets-multiple-plasmids-coexist-in-one-bacterial-cell","title":{"rendered":"New synthetic origin of replication lets multiple plasmids coexist in one bacterial cell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-synthetic-origin-of-replication-lets-multiple-plasmids-coexist-in-one-bacterial-cell3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it,\u201d goes the old adage, which Rice University professor James Chappell completely ignored in a recent <i>Nature Communications<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-68907-1\" target=\"_blank\">publication<\/a>. In the study, Chappell describes an innovation in plasmids, circular pieces of DNA that have been a workhorse of molecular biology research since the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor decades, we\u2019ve been designing experiments around two major limitations of plasmids: fixed copy numbers and incompatibility,\u201d said Chappell, the corresponding author on the study. \u201cWhile functional, such workarounds are clunky. We created a synthetic version of a part of the plasmid called the origin of replication that allows us to modify the plasmid instead of modifying the experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Plasmids are typically put into bacterial cells, where they use the cell\u2019s machinery to build proteins and create copies of themselves. Each plasmid generates tiny pieces of a stop signal, called a negative regulator, which binds to the origin of replication (ORI).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it,\u201d goes the old adage, which Rice University professor James Chappell completely ignored in a recent Nature Communications publication. In the study, Chappell describes an innovation in plasmids, circular pieces of DNA that have been a workhorse of molecular biology research since the 1970s. \u201cFor decades, we\u2019ve been designing [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234141","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}