Realizing a healthy, active, aged society and creating a sustainable society

New Research Results

Successful Evolution of E. coli into Insect Symbiotic Bacteria

In collaboration with the University of Tokyo, researchers in AIST have shown that, by removing essential bacterial symbiont from the stinkbugs, infecting fast-evolving E. coli instead, and maintaining the symbiont-replaced stinkbugs continuously in the laboratory, E. coli can evolve into an essential symbiont that supports the survival of the host stinkbugs within a short period of time, ranging from a few months to a year, through a single mutation that disrupts a global transcriptional regulatory system.
This study demonstrated that the evolution of symbiotic microorganisms, which are essential for host survival, can occur more rapidly and easily than previously envisaged. It was groundbreaking that we successfully made E. coli, the best-studied model bacterium in molecular biology, evolve into a symbiotic bacterium. Using this insect-E. coli experimental symbiotic system, it is expected to greatly advance our understanding of the processes and mechanisms of symbiotic evolution in the future.

Figure: E. coli cells before and after the symbiotic evolution (insets), and adult stinkbugs Plautia stali infected with them
Before symbiotic evolution, E. coli cells are elongated in shape and the infected insects exhibit low emergence rate, small body size, and brown body color (left). After symbiotic evolution, E. coli cells become shorter, and the infected insects exhibit improved emergence rate, larger body size, and green body color (right).

 

Development of Technology to Quickly Determine the Health Status of Mice Using Gut Microbiota

Researchers in AIST developed a novel analytical technology that can determine the characteristics of the bacterial composition of gut microbiota with high accuracy, using polymers that emit blue fluorescence when in contact with bacteria and machine learning to screen the characteristics of the fluorescence intensity patterns.
This technology uses a bioanalytical method called a chemical nose. The chemical nose developed consists of 12 types of polymers with fluorophores that emit light when aggregating. By mixing these polymers with intestinal bacteria, various fluorescent signals can be detected, and the bacteria can be characterized based on those patterns. Using the developed chemical nose, the researchers succeeded in determining the health status of mice with a high degree of accuracy by comparative analysis of gut microbiome samples collected from healthy and insomniac mice. This technology enabled to characterize the state of gut microbiota from a different perspective than the standard gut microbiome analysis method (e.g., 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing analysis), and has the advantages of being faster, easier, and less expensive than amplicon sequencing analysis. In the future, it is expected to be applied as a diagnostic technique for health care, using human gut microbiome samples as specimens.

Analysis of the gut microbiota of mice by the developed chemical nose sensor

Open Innovation Laboratory

Since FY 2016, as a part of the “Open Innovation Arena concept” promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), AIST has created the concept of “open innovation laboratories” (OILs), collaborative research bases located on university campuses, and has been engaged in their provision. We are planning to establish more than ten OILs by FY 2020.

AIST will merge the basic research carried out at universities, etc. with AISTʼs goal-oriented basic research and applied technology development, and will promote bridging research and evelopment and industry by the establishment of OILs.