What is it about?
Instantaneous physical stress in a homogeneous environment induced fast adaptation of E. coli. exposed to a large number of collisions (10 00000 per bacterium per second) with sharp ZnO nanorods. The pressure exerted on the bacterial cell wall was up to 10 GPa and induced phenotype changes:bacteria’s shape became more spherical, the density of their periplasm increased by around 15% and the average thickness of the cell wall by 30%.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The combination of changes occurred at the genomic level (mutations identified in form of single nucleotide polymorphisms) and downregulation of expression of 61 genes encoding proteins involved in β-oxidation of fatty acids, glycolysis,the citric acid cycle, as well as uptake of amino acids and enzyme cofactors.
Perspectives
The effect of exposure to physical contact with nanorods was fixed in phenotype and genome even when the stressing factor was removed. This was confirmed by TEM and EDS measurements performed after 16 hrs, during which a small portion of the survivor bacteria was cultivated in the nanorods-free medium.
Professor Elzbieta Wyroba
Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Phenotypic plasticity of Escherichia coli upon exposure to physical stress induced by ZnO nanorods, Scientific Reports, June 2019, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44727-w.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
