Guiding Bacteria with Small Molecules and RNA

Chemotactic bacteria navigate their chemical environment by coupling sophisticated information
processing capabilities to molecular motors that propel the cells forward. The ability to reprogram bacteria
to follow entirely new chemical signals would create powerful new opportunities in bioremediation,
bionanotechnology, and synthetic biology. However, the complexities of bacterial signaling and limitations
of current protein engineering methods combine to make reprogramming bacteria to follow novel molecules
a difficult task. Here we show that by using a synthetic riboswitch rather than an engineered protein to
recognize a ligand, E. coli can be guided toward and precisely localized to a completely new chemical
signal.