Volume 11, Number 4, 2003
College of Engineering faculty member Jeremy Edwards has developed advanced computerized mathematical models that can be used to predict the evolution of bacterial cells and has found that those cells progress toward optimal behavior.
Edwards, assistant professor of chemical engineering, says the finding could have important implications in such fields as human health, energy and environmental remediation.
"If we can predict evolution, we can use these principles in design applications," Edwards says. "Namely, we may be able to design cells to perform useful tasks."
The work being conducted by Edwards and fellow researchers from the University of California at San Diego, Rafael Ibarra and Bernhard Palsson, was described in a paper in the Nov. 14, 2002, issue of Nature.
"Our past work has utilized optimization-based models of whole cells to calculate the metabolic behavior of bacteria," Edwards says.
The research team works with the Escherichia coli bacteria--the same E. coli that is often in the news for causing outbreaks of food poisoning--because it is one of the most studied organisms on the planet and, as such, there is a large quantity of data from which to construct models.
Borrowing a phrase from Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, Edwards says the team worked from the question: "This is what the cell has, so now what is the best it can do in terms of natural selection or the survival of the fittest?"
"We were extremely successful with the predictions; however, I wondered whether cells always behaved optimally," Edwards says, adding that the latter notion first struck him while a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. "For example, what if the cells had never seen a condition before? I figured that there would be no reason to believe that the behavior would be optimal.
"We decided to take E. coli and put it into environments it had not seen before. The key question was, can you predict how it will evolve?"
The answer was a resounding yes, the researchers say.
Edwards says the findings in the paper published in Nature "clearly show that cells do behave non-optimally in some conditions, and the great importance of the paper is that we show that we can use mathematical models to predict the evolution of bacterial cells and that the bacterial cells evolve toward optimal behavior."
Being able to predict how cells evolve in a laboratory over time is "a big stretch from predicting the evolution of complex cellular life as we know it," Edwards acknowledges, but he says the results are nonetheless extremely valuable.
The findings "open up many future possibilities," he says. "For example, we may be able to design and construct cells to perform useful tasks in bioremediation, protein production, pharmaceutical production and the production of bio-fuels.
"To rationally engineer a cell is nearly impossible. If you understand how the genetic makeup will behave in certain conditions, that is a start. You can use that as an engineering and design principle to begin engineering cells to do certain things."
The project has National Science Foundation funding, and Edwards has received a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the possible use of radiation-resistant bacteria to degrade toxic chemicals, such as benzene and toluene, at hazardous-waste dump sites.
In addition, he would like to use the findings in human health research, particularly cancer, in which "renegade cells optimize without regard for the entire organism," he says.
With the range of potential uses so broad, Edwards says he believes there are many he has not yet considered.
"This should be interesting to people in all kinds of fields, people who can develop applications I don't even see," he says.
--Neil Thomas, AS '76