研究人员称，大肠杆菌单菌体能产生类似神经元放电一样的电脉冲。 与所有的活体生物一样，大肠杆菌用电压传递信息。 此前，测量单菌体细胞膜的电压是不可能的， Joel Kralj及其同事研发出荧光蛋白混合物，它可像生物探针一样对大肠杆菌单菌体进行电生理测量。 这种新的光学传感器称为PROPS，令人惊讶的是，他们发现许多细菌会有光电闪烁现象——快慢不一致，但闪烁的频率大约保持在1赫兹。
发现大肠杆菌单菌体能放电
他们称，大肠杆菌单菌体的闪烁时间在1到40秒之间，而且还对一系列物化学干扰因素具有敏感性。大量试验发现，这种电学峰信号可能与细菌离子通道的开放状态有关。
将来，这种PROPS探针可在医学、环境和工业中检测多种重要细菌的膜电位或电压。
生物探索推荐英文摘要
'Shocking' news about E. Coli
Abstract：Individual cells of E. coli bacteria generate electrical spikes that resemble the firing of neurons, researchers say. Like all living organisms, E. coli bacteria use voltage to transmit information. But, until now, measuring the voltage of an individual bacterial cell membrane had not been possible. Joel Kralj and colleagues engineered a cocktail of fluorescent proteins, which acts as a bio-probe, to perform electrophysiological measurements on individual, living E. coli cells. The researchers call this new optical sensor PROPS, and surprisingly, they found that many bacterial cells blinked with electric light -- some slowly, others rapidly -- at around one hertz. This electrical spiking activity lasted anywhere from one to 40 seconds in the blinking E. coli cells and was sensitive to a range of physical and chemical disturbances, they say. Kralj and his colleagues performed a series of experiments and found that the electrical spiking was likely related to the opening of ion channels in the bacterial cells. In the future, their PROPS probe should be useful in determining the role of membrane potential, or voltage, in a variety of medically, environmentally and industrially important bacteria.
