i am writing a term paper about the e.coli’s benefits to medicine and biotech industry, how it’s a tool in labs and in production phases and how important to the field and why it is the most common model organism since the early times of modern biology? can you suggest me articles and books about any or all of these topics? thnx in advance. (by the way i am an undergrad bio student)
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Well there are two, Eschericia coli and Salmonella typhimurium, gram-negative and gram-positive respectively. These two are easily isolated and grown, very common, not terribly pathogenic, and responsible for a number of low-intensity diseases. If E. coli gets out and contaminates the lab, there is little chance anyone is going to die. In biotechnology, where scientists just want any bacteria to grow and propagate plasmids, E. coli is a safe, easy, and economical choice.
E coli has a rather useful trait for biology and biotechnology in that it can be genetically engineered with relative ease. The process involves modifying the DNA of a plasmid and then introducing the plasmid to an E coli bacterium.
The resultant mutated strain can thus be used to grow a series of chemicals that E.coli cannot ordinarily produce.
One big advantage with this concerns diabetics. Previously insulin was sourced from other animals such as horses and pigs. While this did work, it wasn’t as effective as human insulin at controlling blood sugar levels and there were verified life-threatening allergic reactions.
The safest option was of course human insulin, but this was only available from living donors or cadavers, making its use extremely expensive. This continued until someone had the bright idea of modifying an E.coli strain.
Founding a then-small company called Genentech, a team of researchers were able to successfully modify E coli to produce humulin, an exact molecule-for-molecule match of human insulin. Since the bacteria could still multiply as per normal, this meant that human insulin could be safely produced en masse at a reasonable price. It’s this insulin which is given to diabetics as there is nil chance of an allergic reaction (because it is human insulin) and it works just like the insulin the person would normally produce.