Hydrogen sulfide mediates the interaction between C. elegans and Actinobacteria from its natural microbial environment.

Caenorhabditis elegans proliferates poorly in the presence of abundant Actinobacteria from its natural ecology, but it is unknown why. Here, we show how perturbed levels of hydrogen sulfide modulate the growth rate of both C. elegans and Actinobacteria.

Interpretation of morphogen gradients by a synthetic bistable circuit.

During development, cells gain positional information through the interpretation of dynamic morphogen gradients. A proposed mechanism for interpreting opposing morphogen gradients is mutual inhibition of downstream transcription factors, but isolating the role of this specific motif within a natural network remains a challenge. Here, we engineer a synthetic morphogen-induced mutual inhibition circuit in E.

Experimental evidence on promotion of electric and improved biomass cookstoves.

Improved cookstoves (ICS) can deliver "triple wins" by improving household health, local environments, and global climate. Yet their potential is in doubt because of low and slow diffusion, likely because of constraints imposed by differences in culture, geography, institutions, and missing markets. We offer insights about this challenge based on a multiyear, multiphase study with nearly 1,000 households in the Indian Himalayas.

Escherichia coli can survive stress by noisy growth modulation.

Gene expression can be noisy, as can the growth of single cells. Such cell-to-cell variation has been implicated in survival strategies for bacterial populations. However, it remains unclear how single cells couple gene expression with growth to implement these strategies.

Orthogonal intercellular signaling for programmed spatial behavior.

Bidirectional intercellular signaling is an essential feature of multicellular organisms, and the engineering of complex biological systems will require multiple pathways for intercellular signaling with minimal crosstalk. Natural quorum-sensing systems provide components for cell communication, but their use is often constrained by signal crosstalk. We have established new orthogonal systems for cell-cell communication using acyl homoserine lactone signaling systems.