Bacterial Holography

[Phillip Dodson]

If we combined both original idea's we could use gas vesicles to
stabilise the sedimentation of the bacteria in LB and allow time for
the use of two intersecting coloured light sources to sculpt an
object. eg Red circular beam from on side, Green rectangle from the
front, of a flash would result in the deposition of cylinder if the
rule was RED+GREEN->BLACK DEPOSIT. (alternative to gas vessicle is to
solidify the LB).

[Phillip Dodson]

Variation on this idea: If the cells in the interesecting beams
express adhessive surface proteins such as cadherins we could make a
solid object.

[Patricia Illing]

I've been wading my way through journal articles trying to find
something on the expression of cadherins in prokaryotes. Everything I
can find is to do with their expression for structural analysis with
various cadherin domains being expressed as soluble protiens(often
resulting in inclusion bodies) and then purified rather than the full
endo and ecto domains plus TM domain. It is incredibly frustrating.
On the upside - from what I can tell there are no disulphide bonds in
cadherin extracellular domains.
My concern with all this is that unless I'm missing something - there
hasn't really been an attempt to express a functional cadherin in a
prokaryote and we could spend years trying to get it working ourselves
- and we don't have years.

Another, less cool idea, is that we could try and get all the buoyant
bacteria in a solution to congregate - though not adhere - around the
intersection of the two light sources by making those at the
intersection express a chemoattractant -thus going from a homogenous
bacterial suspension to one with a ball of bacteria (that would
disperse at the end of the stimulus).
Its just another idea - and once again it relies on our ability to get
the second light receptor system working.

[Phillip Dodson]

Excellent workarround using existing bits.
Found one item about bacterial glues, more about their ability to glue
to surfaces than to each other.
Could search under "Adhesins" (which reside on gram negative bacterial
pili and assist adhesion to substrates), "capsules" or "slime
layers" (which form a type of extra cellular matrix.).
Perhaps Dr.Tribe may know some other symetric cell cell adhesion
alternatives for bacteria.

[Lei]

or if we can find an immunoglobulin like protein which can be directed
to the membrain

> > solidify the LB).- Hide quoted text -
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