High frequency radio waves are a far efficient method to add DNA to bacterial cells than conventional approaches such as heat shock.
A collaboration between researchers at the RMIT University in Australia and a private biotechnology firm in the US has successfully demonstrated the use of high-frequency radiowaves to temporarily open up bacterial cell walls to introduce new genetic material into them.are the workhorse for genetic experiments around the world.
The introduction of plasmids into E.coli is a challenging step, though requiring the opening up of the cell wall for a brief period so that the plasmids can enter the cell. The opening up has to be reversible since the plasmid needs the cellular machinery to function normally to do its job.Conventionally, researchers have used the ‘heat-shock’ approach for this step, where the bacteria are shocked by exposure to a relatively high temperature in the presence of the plasmids.
The alternate approach uses gentle laser pulses to make the cell walls favorable for plasmid uptake. However, as few as 30 percent of the cells have been found to have taken up the plasmid in this approach.Previously, researchers at the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research had demonstrated the use of high-frequency electromagnetic energy to make cell walls more permeable.
The researchers used 18 GHz radio waves to open up the bacterial cells for three minutes. Following this, as many as 91 percent of the cells took on the plasmids, a significantly higher number than in the conventional heat-shock approach.
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