Patent ID: 11952576
Assignee: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, A BODY CORPORATE
Field: Biotechnology (Chemistry)
Classification: CPC C | IPC C

Claim 13:
14. A method of controlling bacterial growth, expression, or microcompartment number in a bacterial strain comprising the steps of:
providing a population of the bacterial strain genetically-engineered to have all or a portion of a ccm operon of the bacterial strain under the control of an inducible promoter;
contacting the population of the bacterial strain with an agent that induces the inducible promoter of the ccm operon, wherein inducing the promoter increases expression from the ccm operon whereby increasing expression from the ccm operon increases carboxysome numbers in the population;
removing the agent from the population of the bacterial strain;
maintaining the population of the bacterial strain in ambient CO2 or other CO2 concentration wherein expression from the ccm operon is inhibited, whereby continued growth and division of the population of bacterial strain results in a decrease on the number of carboxysomes in progeny cells in the population; and
following the identified bacterial cell through a plurality of timepoints.