New ‘cellular kill switch’ to improve chemical and material production

The manufacturing of chemicals and materials could be enhanced following the development of an innovative cellular kill switch mechanism by engineers.

A team from Washington University in St Louis has developed a tool that distinguishes between genetically identical microbial cells by looking at their varying work ethics, allowing harder-working cells to be preserved and less functional cells to be eliminated.

The quality control tool, PopQC, uses a sensor inside the cells to see how much work each cell is doing. Subsequently, this triggers a controller to make a protein that allows productive cells to survive and grow, while depriving ineffective cells of nutrition.

This could make it easier to produce biofuels, pharmaceuticals, materials and other useful chemicals, while also helping engineered microbes to perform complex tasks more efficiently and robustly.

Fuzhong Zhang, assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the university's school of engineering and applied science, said: "Because noise is a universal problem in biology, the design principle of this work should inspire engineers from many other fields to improve efficiency of engineered systems."