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Team:Paris Bettencourt/GFP diff
From 2011.igem.org
GFP diffusion
The original experiment
The keystone experiment of the Dubey and Ben-Yehuda paper [1] is a simple experiment. We use one strain of gfp + B.subtilis and one gfp - B.subtilis strain. The two strains of B.subtilis are put together (ratio 1:1) on an LB-agarose (1.5%) plate in exponantial phase. The goal is to have a monolayer of densely packed cells, which is not that easy.
The plated bacteria are then observed through fluorescent microscopy. After a while (between 15min and 2 hours), a transfer of GFP can be observed from the gfp + cells towards the gfp- cells. This cell-to-cell communication was previously unheard of and the original paper [1] strongly suggest that the so-called nanotubes observed through electronic microscopy by the authors is the reason of this transfer.
