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The influence of green fluorescent protein incorporation on bacterial physiology: a note of caution
1School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, England, UK. david.allison@manchester.ac.uk
Aims:
To investigate the effect of green flourescent protein (GFP) incorporation on bacterial physiology.
Methods And Results:
Comparisons were made between four different isogenic pairings of non-GFP-containing parents and their GFP-containing transformants with respect to growth rate and antimicrobial susceptibility. For the latter, sensitivities to 12 different antibiotics were measured initially by disc-diffusion assay, and then subsequently by generation of dose-dependent survival curves for 1 h exposure to different concentrations of tetracycline, ciprofloxacin and cetrimide USP. Whilst no significant difference in growth rate was observed, GFP-containing strains were uniformly and significantly more sensitive to all antimicrobial agents tested, excluding the beta-lactams, than their respective non-GFP-containing counterparts.
Conclusions:
GFP incorporation has a significant effect on bacterial physiology and can modulate antimicrobial susceptibility.
Significance And Impact Of The Study:
Transformation with GFP can affect the physiology of bacterial cells. This may therefore affect the quality and accuracy of data generated depending on the application for which GFP is used.
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