Engineered Bacteria Manufacture and Screen Antimicrobial Peptides against Themselves

Scientists at the University of Texas in Austin (UT Austin) have developed a way of engineering bacteria to manufacture and self-screen potentially unlimited numbers of peptide molecules for antimicrobial activity, in a single tube. The approach engineers the bacteria to express and tether random peptide sequences to their own cell membranes, and effectively self test them for toxicity.Lead researcher Bryan Davies, Ph.D., and colleagues say the platform, which is called SLAY (surface localized a