
Engineered probiotics for cancer detection
Danino et al. Programmable probiotics for detection of cancer in urine. Sci Transl Med. 2015 May 27; 7(289): 289ra84. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa3519. Scientists have used synthetic biology in an ingenious way to detect cancer in the urine. They took a harmless strain of E. coli that colonizes the liver and programmed it into an orally administered diagnostic device that can non-invasively indicate the presence of liver metastasis by producing a luminescent signal, detectab