Pglo Genetic Paper

The pGLO plasmid, which has the bla and GFP gene, was developed so it can operate like the arabinose operon and be able to transcribe genes in the presence of arabinose sugar. In this plasmid, the cluster of genes is regulated by the spontaneous on/off element by a single promoter, which is dependent on the DNA binding protein araC. This protein is at the binding site for RNA polymerase at the beginning of the operon, so when arabinose is present (like in one of the experimental plates), it is taken up by bacteria and interacts with araC to cause a conformational change. This change ultimately helps RNA polymerase bind and transcribe the GFP gene. After translation, the green fluorescent protein and beta-lactamase are produced, which gives the bacteria the traits to glow under UV light and antibiotic resistance. This is how the bacteria in the plate (+pGLO LB/amp/ara) had the ability to resist ampicillin treatment and displayed the glowing phenotype, as the cells produced more GFP, the
That is quite different from our experiment with the pGLO plasmid because the plasmid itself was already cut with restriction enzymes, so the GFP gene could perfectly fit where the arabinose genes had been on the operon. Instead of testing different types of plasmids/genes that could be taken up by the bacterial cells, this experiment focused on just one engineered plasmid to see if successful transformation could cause phenotypic modification in the cells. However, both this experiment and Cehovin (2013) were able to conclude that transformation of DNA from the environment can be integrated into the genome of the organisms, enabling the transformed bacteria to obtain new phenotypic traits that allow them to function differently than their wild type