Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Microb Biotechnol. 2012 Jul;5(4):536-48. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-7915.2012.00333.x. Epub 2012 Mar 2.
The ever-growing use of pharmaceutical compounds, including antibacterial substances, poses a substantial pollution load on the environment. Such compounds can compromise water quality, contaminate soils, livestock and crops, enhance resistance of microorganisms to antibiotic substances, and hamper human health. We report the construction of a novel panel of genetically engineered Escherichia coli reporter strains for the detection and classification of antibiotic substances. Each of these strains harbours a plasmid that carries a fusion of a selected gene promoter to bioluminescence (luxCDABE) reporter genes and an alternative tryptophan auxotrophy-based non-antibiotic selection system. The bioreporter panel was tested for sensitivity and responsiveness to diverse antibiotic substances by monitoring bioluminescence as a function of time and of antibiotic concentrations. All of the tested antibiotics were detected by the panel, which displayed different response patterns for each substance. These unique responses were analysed by several algorithms that enabled clustering the compounds according to their functional properties, and allowed the classification of unknown antibiotic substances with a high degree of accuracy and confidence.
越来越多的药物化合物，包括抗菌物质，对环境造成了巨大的污染负担。这些化合物会降低水质，污染土壤、牲畜和农作物，增强微生物对抗生素物质的抵抗力，并对人类健康造成危害。我们报告了一种新型基因工程大肠杆菌报告菌株的构建，用于检测和分类抗生素物质。每个菌株都含有一个质粒，其中融合了一个选定基因启动子到生物发光（luxCDABE）报告基因，以及一个替代色氨酸营养缺陷型的非抗生素选择系统。通过监测生物发光作为时间和抗生素浓度的函数，测试了生物报告器面板对不同抗生素物质的敏感性和反应性。该面板检测到了所有测试的抗生素，每种物质都显示出不同的反应模式。通过几种算法对这些独特的反应进行了分析，这些算法可以根据化合物的功能特性对其进行聚类，并可以高度准确和有信心地对未知抗生素物质进行分类。
