Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Tom Ellis

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Professor of Synthetic Genome Engineering
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7615t.ellis Website CV

 
 
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Location

 

704Bessemer BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Walker:2019:10.1111/1751-7915.13340,
author = {Walker, K and Goosens, V and Das, A and Graham, A and Ellis, T},
doi = {10.1111/1751-7915.13340},
journal = {Microbial Biotechnology},
pages = {611--619},
title = {Engineered cell-to-cell signalling within growing bacterial cellulose pellicles},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13340},
volume = {12},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Bacterial cellulose is a strong and flexible biomaterial produced at high yields by Acetobacter species and has applications in health care, biotechnology and electronics. Naturally, bacterial cellulose grows as a large unstructured polymer network around the bacteria that produce it, and tools to enable these bacteria to respond to different locations are required to grow more complex structured materials. Here, we introduce engineered celltocell communication into a bacterial celluloseproducing strain of Komagataeibacter rhaeticus to enable different cells to detect their proximity within growing material and trigger differential gene expression in response. Using synthetic biology tools, we engineer Sender and Receiver strains of K. rhaeticus to produce and respond to the diffusible signalling molecule, acylhomoserine lactone. We demonstrate that communication can occur both within and between growing pellicles and use this in a boundary detection experiment, where spliced and joined pellicles sense and reveal their original boundary. This work sets the basis for synthetic celltocell communication within bacterial cellulose and is an important step forward for pattern formation within engineered living materials.
AU  - Walker,K
AU  - Goosens,V
AU  - Das,A
AU  - Graham,A
AU  - Ellis,T
DO  - 10.1111/1751-7915.13340
EP  - 619
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 1751-7915
SP  - 611
TI  - Engineered cell-to-cell signalling within growing bacterial cellulose pellicles
T2  - Microbial Biotechnology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13340
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/66017
VL  - 12
ER  -
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