TALK'E. Coli

through Light Automated Cell Control (Lac²)

This year, the Grenoble-EMSE-LSU iGEM team has developed a bioelectronic device enabling the population control of a bacterial culture with light: Talk’E. Coli.

In general, bacteria are among the fastest growing and most widespread organisms on Earth. They can thrive in nearly every environment or ecosystem, and some can even reach a doubling time of only 10min [1]. Even though bacterial growth conforms to quite simple mathematical laws, many parameters of this process are far from being fully understood. Unraveling these genotypic and phenotypic processes represents an important challenge in current public health issues. Conceptually, we have developed a biological system that will enable researchers to monitor and control cellular growth with light. Such an undertaking could be of great interest for improving the understanding of bacterial functions, especially in regards to characterizing cellular populations and the defense mechanisms involved with oxidative stress responses.

Light allows for precise machine-to-cell and cell-to-machine communication in both time and space and was thus elected to interface a biological cell culture to our electronic device.

Overview on Light Automated Cell Control (Lac²).