475: Modifying Mixed Microbiota

This episode: New techniques allow specific modifications in certain members of a complex community of microbes, without isolating them in pure culture first!

Download Episode (11.5 MB, 16.7 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Tomato golden mosaic virus

News item

Takeaways

The technology for understanding and manipulating microbial genetics has come a long way in a short time. It used to take years even to sequence a small genome, and now thousands can be sequenced in just a few days. The technology to change and even create genetic sequences is also much further advanced now than just a few decades ago. But still, many analyses and modifications require a pure culture of a microbe to carry out.

This study tested a method for modification of single or multiple species in a community of many. The method allows for identification of which species were successfully modified in targeted ways, and can allow the modified species to be extracted and studied individually.

 

Journal Paper:
Rubin BE, Diamond S, Cress BF, Crits-Christoph A, Lou YC, Borges AL, Shivram H, He C, Xu M, Zhou Z, Smith SJ, Rovinsky R, Smock DCJ, Tang K, Owens TK, Krishnappa N, Sachdeva R, Barrangou R, Deutschbauer AM, Banfield JF, Doudna JA. 2022. Species- and site-specific genome editing in complex bacterial communities. 1. Nat Microbiol 7:34–47.

 

Other interesting stories:

• Microbes that degrade plastic may be increasing in response to plastic pollution
• Algae in ocean communicate with each other using fluorescence

 

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