Lana Sweeten-Shults , Times Record News 3:09 p.m. CT June 14, 2017

Researchers at MIT found a way to control bacteria using colored light. They projected images of such things as fruit onto culture plates using red, green and blue light, and the bacteria responded by producing the same colored pigment. The result is a kind of bacteria photocopy. One of the researchers who co-authored a paper about the technology is Felix Moser, a 2003 graduate of Wichita Falls High School.(Photo: Courtesy of Felix Moser)

Those pesky E. coli bacteria.

Engineered bacteria with multicolor vision formed this image of Mario from Super Mario Bros. Researchers at MIT projected images on culture plates using red, green and blue lights that bacteria emulated. One of the researchers who co-authored a paper about the technology is Felix Moser, a 2003 graduate of Wichita Falls High School.(Photo: Courtesy of Felix Moser)

Theyre the vexing microorganisms behind intestinal infections.

The troublesome, minuscule entities behind urinary tract infections.

When you hear about food poisoning outbreaks, some form of E.coli is often the culprit.

But, as it is, most types of E.coli are harmless.

And, if you ask biological engineer Felix Moser, a 2003 graduate of Wichita Falls High School who is now a scientist at start-up biotech company Synlife, theyre also pretty fascinating.

Moser is one of the co-authors, with fellow former Massachusetts Institute of Technology postdocs Jesus Fernandez-Rodriguez and Miryoung Song along withMIT professor Chris Voigt, of a paper that describes how researchers were able to create what Voigt has described as disco bacteria, though others might call them microbial Monets or Petri dish Ansel Adamses.

It was 12 years ago that these researchers started engineering bacteria to replicate black-and-white images bacterial photocopies, if you will by getting them to mirror the patterns of light projected onto a culture dish.

Now the researchers, whose groundbreaking work has been featured in MIT News, Nature Chemical Biology, The Economist and New Scientist, to name a few, have upped their game and introduced color to the mix.

Engineering cells to respond to light is not new, according to a May 25 article about these multicolor bacteriain The Economist. Other scientists have used optogeneticsto control nerve cells.

But former Wichitan Moser and his fellow researchers have engineered multicolor vision, not in nerve cells, butin E. coli, which are naturally blind, since they live in the very un-disco-like reaches of the intestine.

The researchers took these organisms and programmed them with a protein- and enzyme-based system, essentially, like they would a computer. They added 18 genes to the E.coli the black-and-white versions required adding only three extra genes with more than 46,000 base pairs of DNA. With these genes, the bacteria were ableto build three kinds of light sensors and can see red, green and blue.

While other scientists have controlled living cells using chemicals, Moser and his fellow scientists were able to tell the bacteria to create images of fruit and even Mario of Super Mario Bros. by shining colored light through a stencil onto a bacteria-coated plate. The E. coli, after all this human tinkering, produced enzymes that turn the bacteria into the same color of the light being shined on them.

So making pictures of bacteria its a nice example of how you would engineer them, said Moser in a phone interview about his teams disco bacteria. ... The genes tell the bacteria not only to respond to color but to turn on other genes. When the bacteria sees red light, it turns on a gene to make the red coloring.

The research shows how scientists can control cells and tell them what to do: We are engineering bacteria to respond in ways they would not normally respond.

Of course, this project, which was four years in the making, hasnt just been a fun time with bacteria.

The idea is that genetically altered bacteria could be made to produce drugs, artificial sweeteners or even perfumes.

Theres a company making perfume components, Moser said.

Instead of growing thousands upon thousands of roses to make perfume, cells could be engineered to reproduce those aromas.

The advantage would be that a lot of biological mass would be saved, sinceperfume companies wouldnt need to harvest all those roses. Also, chemicals could be made at much higher quantities.

Theres a team working on engineering salmonella to invade tumor cells and kill the tumor cells but thats really complex behavior, he said.

Moser, who was an Eagle Scout with Troop 138 growing up, ended up in Wichita Falls with his parents, who were both German citizens. His father was a T-37 instructor pilot at Sheppard Air Force Base.

He first became interested in science when he was a student at Wichita Falls High School.

Old High had a really great biology teacher, Dan Patrick. He did a fantastic job communicating his passions for science and biology, he said, and he might not have gone into the field without Mr. Patrick, he added, who would take students on summer trips to such places as Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Moser went on a couple of trips to South America with Patrick.

Moser did his undergraduate work at Cornell University. He wanted to join a research lab and ended up working with Cornell biochemist Dr. David Wilson.

I got really interested in using biotechnology to solve problems learning how to manipulate DNA to get organisms to do what we need them to do.

Moser got into graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, then followed his academic adviser, Chris Voigt, to MIT, where Voigt started a new lab. Its where he finished his doctoral degree and stayed to do postdoctoral work in synthetic biology, which is a newer term for genetic engineering.

Besides controlling bacteria using colored light, Moser has written DNA to get microorganisms to do other things.

Instead of engineering bacteria to respond to light, he has engineered them to respond to environmental stresses in big tanks, such as recognizing oxygen conditions and changing which genes turn on and off so they become more robust.

Its trying to engineer them to be smarter about how they grow.

He also has expanded on the color bacteria project.

Instead of turning on the genes that produce color, we're trying to get them to produce materials.

Moser said he has used light to prompt bacteria to produce biofilm, the slimy layer you might see hanging around on the surface of water.

Some biofilm is really important in medicine, he said of his appreciation for even slimy biofilm almost as much as his appreciation for those pesky, disco E. coli.

Follow Times Record News senior editor/reporter Lana Sweeten-Shults on Twitter @LanaSweetenShul.

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Former Wichitan engineers color-happy 'disco bacteria' - Times Record News