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[In Depth] Step aside, E. coli

ScienceNOW - Fetched: June 23rd, 2016, 2:00pm UTC

Escherichia coli has long been the bacterium of choice for laboratory experiments, but geneticist George Church and his team are hoping to save scientists time by getting them to use a faster-reproducing model organism. Vibrio natriegens is a salt marsh organism with a doubling time of as little as 10 minutes—twice the fastest time for E. coli. Church's team has released the first complete genome of V. natriegens, and hope to make it a "drop-in, turnkey alternative" to E. coli for future research. Biologists see questions still to be resolved about V. natriegens, but are cautiously optimistic about its potential. Author: Ben Panko

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