What is it about?
Genetically modified cyanobacteria can be important in various biotech applications. To improve their biosafety, we developed a genetic device that can induce cell death of only geneticaly engineered but not wild-type cyanobacteria. Cell death is triggered by addition of a low concentration of zinc ions, sufficient to induce production of an enzyme which degrades nucleic acids, thus preventing spread of genetic modification to other organisms in the environment.
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Why is it important?
In the case genetically modified cyanobacteria are accidentally released from biotech laboratories or production plants into environment, it is now possible to differentially eliminate such GM microorganisms without major impact on other (micro)organisms in the nature.
Perspectives
This is the first example of an inducible biosafety genetic switch in cyanobacteria. It took us three years to develop it. The work would not be possible without the support of a EU grant (FP7 project named CyanoFactory) and great contribution of my coworkers.
Dr Marko Dolinar
University of Ljubljana
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Biosafety of biotechnologically important microalgae: intrinsic suicide switch implementation in cyanobacteriumSynechocystissp.PCC 6803, Biology Open, March 2016, The Company of Biologists,
DOI: 10.1242/bio.017129.
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