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A light-controlled cell lysis system in bacteria

  • Biotechnology Methods - Short Communication
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Intracellular products (e.g., insulin), which are obtained through cell lysis, take up a big share of the biotech industry. It is often time-consuming, laborious, and environment-unfriendly to disrupt bacterial cells with traditional methods. In this study, we developed a molecular device for controlling cell lysis with light. We showed that intracellular expression of a single lysin protein was sufficient for efficient bacterial cell lysis. By placing the lysin-encoding gene under the control of an improved light-controlled system, we successfully controlled cell lysis by switching on/off light: OD600 of the Escherichia coli cell culture was decreased by twofold when the light-controlled system was activated under dark condition. We anticipate that our work would not only pave the way for cell lysis through a convenient biological way in fermentation industry, but also provide a paradigm for applying the light-controlled system in other fields of biotech industry.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Abbreviations

RFU:

Relative fluorescent unit

eGFP:

Enhanced green fluorescence protein

OD600 :

The optical density at 600 nm

SJTU:

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the first-class discipline construction program of Zhejiang Province (GY16021050007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, Zhejiang, China

    Geyi Wang, Xin Lu, Yisha Zhu, Wei Zhang, Jiahui Liu, Yankang Wu, Liyang Yu, Dongchang Sun & Feng Cheng

Authors
  1. Geyi Wang
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  2. Xin Lu
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  3. Yisha Zhu
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  4. Wei Zhang
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  5. Jiahui Liu
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  6. Yankang Wu
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  7. Liyang Yu
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  8. Dongchang Sun
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  9. Feng Cheng
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dongchang Sun or Feng Cheng.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

10295_2018_2034_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Supplemental Material: Fig. S1 (evaluation of dynamic range of the light-controlled system from SJTU iGEM team), Fig. S2 (schematic representations of genetic elements in plasmids). Fig. S3 (construction of plasmids pZJUTiGEM002 and pZJUTiGEM003). Fig. S4 (Schematic of the light-controlled cell lysis system), Figs. S5 and S6 (The fluorescein standard curves), Table S1 (Strains, plasmids and primers used), Table S2 (Description of recombinant strains generated in this study), Table S3 (The functional annotation of pZJUTiGEM001 sequence) and Supplemental Methods. (DOCX 2463 kb)

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Wang, G., Lu, X., Zhu, Y. et al. A light-controlled cell lysis system in bacteria. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 45, 429–432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2034-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2034-4

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