Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life

Опубликовано 6 сентября 2016, 17:23

While most of us only know E. coli as a lethal kind of food poisoning, we actually carry hundreds of billions of these bacteria in our bodies for our entire lives. Over the past fifty years E. coli has been probed and dissected by thousands of biologists who are seeking answers to the most fundamental questions of biology. Why? Despite its microscopic size, the E. coli bacteria contains over four thousand genes that operate a sophisticated network of millions of molecules. Currently we only know what 600 of those 4000 genes are for, and Francis Crick wanted to create an entire research institution dedicated to mapping the complete structure of the organism. The story of E.coli is actually the story of modern biology, as scientists in the 1940ΓÇÖs seized on it as the fast breeding microbe they needed for experiments. Today, ΓÇ£engineered E.coliΓÇ¥ is a part of almost every part of the biotechnology world, playing a role in everything from the manufacture of human insulin to jet fuel.