Browsing by Subject "menetelmänkehitys"

Susceptibility to antibiotics is constantly developing in bacteria due to selection pressure caused by use of antibiotics. For this reason, finding new antimicrobial substances is imperative. High-throughput screening (HTS) is an important tool to find new active substances. The need to analyse as many substances in as small time as possible is emphasised in modern drug development. Robust methods, suitable for fast throughput of substances, miniaturisation and automation, are particularly useful. In the context of antimicrobial screening, methods utilising bioluminescence can correspond this need, and genetic engineering can help in developing bacterial strains with beneficial features for screening. In this work, two screening methods were developed and optimised using genetically engineered Escherichia coli strains. The screening methods make use of the bioluminescent properties of the strains, and the methods can be used to screen compound libraries for antimicrobials rapidly enough to approach HTS. The strain E. coli WZM120/pCGLS 11 is constitutively luminescent, so weakening of luminescence means the cell viability weakens. The strain E. coli K12/pCSS305, where luminescence is produced by a heat-inducible runaway plasmid, can be used to especially detect compounds inhibiting DNA replication. In developing the method, workflow was optimised and conditions were validated so as to enable possible HTS campaigns. The target was to create as simple, fast and reproducible a method as possible. The Z' values calculated in assessing the performance are excellent for a cell-based method. The signal is readily distinguishable, the bacterial strains are in a stable manner, and the method is well reproducible. It is possible to continue assay development from 96-well format to 384-well format.