The initial method had involved genetically reprogramming E. coli, including chicken sheds, rat nests, sewage, and the Muddy River down the street from the HMS campus, they discovered viruses that could still infect the modified bacteria.ĭiscovering that the bacteria weren't fully virus-resistant "was a bummer," Nyerges said. When they sampled local sites rife with E. But then Nyerges teamed up with research fellow Siân Owen and graduate student Eleanor Rand in the lab of co-author Michael Baym, assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. In 2022, a group from the University of Cambridge thought they'd made an E. The findings build on earlier efforts by genetic engineers to achieve a helpful, safe, virus-resistant bacterium. Such biocontainment strategies are of increasing interest as groups explore the safe deployment of GMOs for growing crops, reducing disease spread, generating biofuels, and removing pollutants from open environments. The authors said their work suggests a general method for making any organism immune to viruses and preventing gene flow into and out of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The work also provides the first built-in safety measure that prevents modified genetic material from being incorporated into natural cells, he said. "We can't say it's fully virus-resistant, but so far, based on extensive laboratory experiments and computational analysis, we haven't found a virus that can break it," Nyerges said. "We believe we have developed the first technology to design an organism that can't be infected by any known virus," said the study's first author, Akos Nyerges, research fellow in genetics in the lab of George Church in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Results are published March 15 in Nature. Currently, viruses that infect vats of bacteria can halt production, compromise drug safety, and cost millions of dollars. The work promises to reduce the threats of viral contamination when harnessing bacteria to produce medicines such as insulin as well as other useful substances, such as biofuels.
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