Co-culture and Growth
Co-culturing is a technique of culturing or growing two or more than two different populations of cells in the same culture plate. It is a useful way to understand the interaction between two different types of cells, making it advantageous for studies of cell-cell communication.
Here in we have the plan to co-culture our engineered strain of E.coli (which can independently detect and capture each of the noxious gases and harmful chemicals) with naturally occurring microbes which can consume these harmful gases and chemicals through their evolved metabolic pathways. This ensures the existence of a sink for these pollutants, and thereby the longevity of the synthetic microbes.
Simply introducing the metabolic pathways of qualified co-culture cells (which can consume these harmful gases and chemicals) in a synthetic microbe induces immense burden and reduces its longevity. This approach has been taken up by many teams, only to result in the non-viability of these microbes. Therefore, we have taken a novel co-culturing method which is partially synthetic and partially natural to tackle pollution in a more efficient and effective manner.
| Chemical | Organism |
|---|---|
| Acetaldehyde | Pelobacter carbinolicus , P. acetylenicus |
| Nitric Oxide | species of Pseudomonas, Alkaligenes , Bacillus and algae -Dunaliella tertiolecta |
| Mercury | Microbacterium oxydans, Ochrobactrum, Lysinibacillus, Serratia marcescens |
| Xylene | Pandoraea sp. strain WL1 |
| Arsenic | Halomonadaceaebacterium GFAJ-1 |
| Lead | Clostridium formicoaceticum ,C.thermoaceticum, algae -Chlorella vutgaris, Spirogyra |
| Carbon monoxide | Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
| Uranium | algae -Cladophora hutchinsiae |
| Chromium | algae -Oedogonium hatei | Copper | algae - Gelidium | Zinc | algae -Gelidium |
