Hannah Thomasy in The Scientist:
The human gut is awash in a sea of microbes that quietly ferment fibers, produce vitamins, and exchange information with the immune system.1 Now, scientists are tasking bacteria with yet another job as they spelunk their way through the digestive system: cancer detection.
An international team of researchers engineered a bacterial biosensor capable of identifying a cancer-associated DNA mutation, which they published in the journal Science.2 The research team included molecular biologists Robert Cooper and Jeff Hasty of the University of California, San Diego and bowel cancer researchers Josephine Wright and Susan Woods at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and Daniel Worthley at the Colonoscopy Clinic. The study authors hope that this technology will one day aid in the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer, one of the most common causes of cancer-related death globally.
While scientists have previously engineered bacteria to detect inflammation or bleeding in the gut, this is the first bacterial biosensor that detects a specific DNA sequence from host tissues. To accomplish this feat, scientists leveraged Acinetobacter baylyi’s ability to take up extracellular DNA and integrate these sequences into its own genome.
More here.