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Updated: Jun 17, 2025

Electroporation of Functional Bacterial Effectors into Mammalian Cells
Published on: January 19, 2015
Microbial messengers: nucleic acid delivery by bacteria
Alison Heggie1, Teresa L M Thurston2, Tom Ellis3
1Centre for Bacterial Resistance Biology, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK; Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK; Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
Abstract:
The demand for diverse nucleic acid delivery vectors, driven by recent biotechnological breakthroughs, offers opportunities for continuous improvements in efficiency, safety, and delivery capacity. With their enhanced safety and substantial cargo capacity, bacterial vectors offer significant potential across a variety of applications. In this review, we explore methods to engineer bacteria for nucleic acid delivery, including strategies such as engineering attenuated strains, lysis circuits, and conjugation machinery. Moreover, we explore pioneering techniques, such as manipulating nanoparticle (NP) coatings and outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), representing the next frontier in bacterial vector engineering. We foresee these advancements in bacteria-mediated nucleic acid delivery, through combining bacterial pathogenesis with engineering biology techniques, as a pivotal step forward in the evolution of nucleic acid delivery technologies.
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