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New tools for an old workhorse

Nature Biotechnology volume 18, pages 1241–1242 (2000)Cite this article

Escherichia coli, the archetypical model organism of cellular and molecular biology, still has some secrets, it seems. It has revealed many fundamental principles of cell metabolism, macromolecular synthesis, and gene regulation. It is better characterized than any other cell. But there remains so much more to learn.

In this issue, Selinger et al.1 describe a technology for unlocking some of these remaining secrets. They provide the first detailed report of E. coli global gene expression analysis using DNA oligonucleotide microarray chips, with an average of one oligonucleotide probe per 30 base pairs over the entire genome2. This work demonstrates the potential of bacterial gene chip technology to accelerate the post-sequence discovery process in unique ways. In addition, the public availability of these initial results represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the E. coli research community to collectively use, interpret, and validate this information, and to place it in a context of physiological relevance. This latter statement applies equally well to the E. coli genome sequence itself3. Our understanding and annotation of the DNA genome sequence and RNA transcriptome data sets will likely coevolve in a series of refinement cycles dependent on follow-up studies using both bioinformatics and laboratory experimentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. associate professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Miami School of Medicine, FL 33101

    Kenneth E. Rudd

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  1. Kenneth E. Rudd
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Rudd, K. New tools for an old workhorse. Nat Biotechnol 18, 1241–1242 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/82339

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