Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, March 16 (Xinhua) researchers at Harvard Medical School in the United States have made great progress in genetic engineering and synthetic biology. They have modified a strain of Escherichia coli to make it immune to all known viruses in nature, while minimizing the possibility of bacteria or their modified genes escaping into the wild. This work is expected to reduce the risk of viral contamination when using bacteria to produce drugs and other useful substances.

The study was published in the journal Nature on March 15, 2023. The lead author of the study is a postdoctoral Akos Nyerges in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. "We believe we have developed the first technology to design a creature that cannot be infected by any known virus," he said. "

According to CTOnews.com, the key to the technology is to change the codon in the bacteria, which tells the cell how to make protein. Nyerges and colleagues found that by changing the amino acid corresponding to the codon (the constituent unit of the protein), bacteria can produce misfolded, nonfunctional viral proteins, thereby preventing the virus from replicating and infecting more cells.

In addition, the technology provides two security measures. One is to prevent horizontal gene transfer, that is, the exchange of gene fragments and characteristics (such as antibiotic resistance) between bacteria. Nyerges and colleagues replaced bacterial genes with TCG or TCA (two codons) where leucine, an amino acid, was needed. If other organisms absorb these modified gene fragments, they will produce useless proteins without any evolutionary advantage. "this genetic information will be meaningless." Nyerges said.

The second is to make bacteria dependent on a laboratory-made amino acid that does not exist in nature. If any bacteria escape, they will lose this amino acid and die. As a result, superbugs do not infect humans or other animals.

Nyerges looks forward to exploring codon reprogramming as a tool to encourage bacteria to produce medically useful synthetic materials that may require expensive chemical methods to make. "there are still many unknown areas waiting for us to explore." He said.

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