Hidden Genes May Be Tapped for New Antibiotics
Published:13 Jul.2022 Source:Rice University
Silents are potentially golden in the search for antibiotics to slow the ongoing crisis of resistance in the treatment of disease.
Rice University bioscientists have designed novel on and off switches to control the "silent" genes in a strain of bacteria. Their strategy could boost the perpetual search for new antibiotics. The researchers customized CRISPR tools to control the expression of genes in Streptomyces bacteria that, in nature, are only expressed when necessary. Until now, those genes have been challenging for synthetic biologists to access.