Aaron Dy

A study from the Dalia and Brun labs at Indiana University (go Hoosiers!) showed images of how Vibrio cholera can use pili to capture and take up nearby DNA. The videos of bacteria grabbing nearby DNA and the story of first author Courtney Ellison seeing the DNA uptake were picked up by the New York Times. I first saw news of the work on Twitter from a university press release along with fantastic gif of a bacterium in action.

Toehold switch sensors are synthetic riboregulators that control the translation of a gene via RNA–RNA interactions. They utilize a designed hairpin structure to block gene translation in cis by sequestration of the ribosome binding site (RBS) and start codon. Translation is activated upon the binding of a trans-acting trigger RNA to the toehold region of the switch, which relieves the sequestration of the RBS and allows translation of the downstream gene (Fig. 2a)18.

We continue to improve our ability to read, write, and edit DNA on larger and larger scales. GP-write wants to gather and coordinate the global enthusiasm around large-scale genome engineering to bring about some major advancements in several areas. Overall, they have the goal to reduce of cost of building and testing large genomes by over 1,000-fold within ten years.