E. Coli - Friend or Foe?

As a kid and teenager, it was drilled into our minds that E. coli was bad.  It infects food and makes people sick and thus should be deemed an enemy for all eternity.  However, if that microbiology class taught me anything it's that all things have purpose.  Now, E. coli has many good uses, the best probable being a good host for DNA vectors and genomic research.  Two recent newsworthy breakthroughs have got me intrigued about our little friends who keep the Imodium flying off the shelves at the local pharmacy. 

First off, E. coli is being used to produce medicine.  Not just any medicine but antibiotics, most specifically erythromycin A.  This antibiotic very similar to penicillin, is used in patients who usually have an allergic reaction to penicillin.  But erythromycin A has 10 chiral, stereospecific carbons which makes this molecule really, really, REALLY, difficult to make synthetically.  Researchers at Tufts University have successfully produced erythromycin A and two other variants using E. coli.  The species which produced them is naturally found in soil and if this can be utilized, it can drastically cut cost, time, and energy to make such a vital antibiotic.  (BTW, the ability to more efficiently produce medicine, physically and financially, is essentially what I will be focusing my career on...so this is kind of a big deal!)

Next and probably way more interesting to the rest of the world is the new found storage capacity of E. coli.  Yes, I'm talking about storing your computer files, like pictures, movies, and files, in bacteria.  The DNA of the bacteria can be encoded using the for DNA bases to transform anything into a base-4 code.  What's better?  The "headers" and "footers" needed to incorporate the DNA into the bacteria can also act as the coded key for the data.  Thus, without the code for the key, the data remains almost un-crackable.  Bacteria offers almost the ultimate safe as it is the most resilient "thing" on the earth.  And it can reproduce to make countless copies of the data.  But the best advantage of the data storage is the amount.   900 terabytes can be stored on 1 gram of E. coli.  For perspective, a current 1.5 terabyte external hard drive weighs 1 kilogram.  That would be the equivalent of 900,000 terabytes of information or about 180,000,000,000 songs!  DAMN!  Even Xzibit cannot fit that many songs into a car on "Pimp My Ride." 

All in all, our little enemy is actually one of our biggest allies in both medicine and technology.  Every day, thousands of researchers are pouring countless hours on time into this one species.  So next time you hear someone badmouthing E. coli, think twice before disrespecting the little guys.