CC Professors Kristine Lang and Phoebe Lostroh are studying Acinetobacter baylii,<\/i> a non-pathogenic soil bacteria, to understand how it takes in DNA, leading to genetic changes.<\/p>\n
Bacteria have only one parent so they don\u2019t undergo genetic variation the way humans do, explained Lostroh, a microbiologist. She said various bacteria use one of three methods of \u201chorizontal gene transfer\u201d and one of those methods is \u201ccompetence,\u201d or the ability to uptake DNA from the environment, which is not well understood.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompetence is the least common method but many bacteria that make us sick use this and it seems to be important in helping them prepare to attack the human body and resist antibiotics. It would be helpful if we knew more about this mechanism,\u201d said Lostroh.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where Lang, a physicist, comes in. Her expertise with the physics research tool Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) [see definition at top] led the two scientists to team up to see if they could get detailed images of bacteria. When that proved successful in 2009, they moved on to see if they could visualize competence \u2014 get images of the tiny machine a bacteria cell makes to bring in DNA \u2014 as a way to better understand what is going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think the bacteria build an appendage to bring DNA in through a pore on its outer membrane. We\u2019d like to get a picture of these pores or competence appendages in an intact bacterium \u2014 something that hasn\u2019t been done before,\u201d Lang said. They also hope to get the first-ever images of these cells while alive. The National Science Foundation grant will allow them to upgrade the college\u2019s AFM to make such imaging possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really excited to try to find out if these little cells make these appendages on purpose, and perhaps in response to the presence of DNA,\u201d Lostroh said.<\/p>\n
Another part of their work is trying to determine which genes in the bacteria are required for competence. To do this, they are studying cells without specific genes one by one. \u201cStudents in our FYE class\u00a0took pictures of different mutants and we found out the different genes changed the shape of the bacteria in numerous ways,\u201d Lang explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CC Professors Kristine Lang and Phoebe Lostroh are studying Acinetobacter baylii, a non-pathogenic soil bacteria, to understand how it takes in DNA, leading to genetic changes. Bacteria have only one parent so they don\u2019t undergo genetic variation the way humans do, explained Lostroh, a microbiologist. She said various bacteria use one of three methods of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-8258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-april-2014","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8258"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8340,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions\/8340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}