Researchers engineer bacteria to clean up industrial wastewater

Researchers engineer bacteria to clean up industrial wastewater

Five clusters of genes from different organisms put into a single bacterial strain.

Bacteria: Recording Gene Activity More Efficiently

Genetic-engineered bacteria break down industrial contaminants

Once that was done, the researchers started looking through the genomes of species that have been identified as breaking down industrial contaminants. The breakdown of complex molecules typically involves more than one enzyme, and the genes for these enzymes tend to end up clustered together, so that they can be produced as a single, large RNA that encodes all the proteins needed. This simplifies regulating their production, making it easy to en…