Symbiosis,

the close relationship living together between

microorganisms and animals, is actually very common and in fact
necessary for our survival. If you just think about us, we can’t
make vitamin K, which is crucial for blood clotting. But bacteria in
our gut can.So we give them food. They live in our gut, in this
happy, safe environment, make vitamin K and get free food.
Termites actually cannot digest wood but the bacteria in their gut
can. This is a symbiotic relationship where the bacteria get the
food and now termites can use the wood.
So it is throughout animal kingdom that microbes and animals are
working together. There would be very little lives on this planet if
we didn’t work well with different microbes.

Now speaking of symbiosis, one bacterium you encountered in

your reading is particularly interesting - vibrio fischeri. It is really
cool because it glows in the dark. And things like this in and of
itself always excite scientists.
This is a fascinating organism that has learned that they can end
up being protected and form a symbiotic relationship by being
able to glow in the dark.
Angler fish. It is a deep sea fish, kind of creepy looking.
What’s that on their head ? It’s a lure.
We know those deep sea animals are going to be attracted to
any sort of light that is around. And the angler fish has this long.
dangling thing that is full of vibrio fischeri. It gives off just enough
light to attract prey but not so much as to illuminate itself. They it
eats those fishes that are attracted to the lure.

Bobtail squids have vibrio fischeri living in them as well. They live
in fairly shallow water in the pacific ocean of Hawaii. They are
nocturnal. So they hide during the day and come out at night.
Now if you imagine a dark night, the squids blend in fairly well, just
because it’s dark, sort of clearish, translucent.
The problem is that they are not translucent enough. So if you
have a bright, the squids are visible from below by their dark
silhouette.
So predators know where they are. Exactly. So they’ve
developed this special organ which hosts vibrio fischeri. The organ
glows just enough to light up the squid.
So its silhouette becomes as light as the sky and the squid
becomes invisible from below.
Now what got some of us who weren’t marine biologist so
excited about vibrio fischeri is that we figured out which gene
allows them to glow in the dark. And we are using it in molecular
biology. In transgenic technology, also called gene splicing, we
take a gene out of one organism and put it in another.
Let’s see you’ve found a gene that protects some wild plants
against pest and you want to transplant that gene into a crop
plant, because you want to protect the crop against pest
damage. Let’s say you already managed to take the gene out of
the wild plant and now you are trying to put it into the crops’ cell.
The problem is how can you quickly tell whether you have
successfully got the gene inside the cells. That is where glowing
in the dark gene comes in.
What you do is to attach glowing in the dark gene to your pest
resistance gene and transplant these two genes together.
If the cell starts to glow in the dark, that’s a sign that the two
genes got in, which is what you want to find out. So you are
doing the experiment with a whole bunch of cells, it is really easy
to separate the ones that received the gene from those that didn’t.
That’s really invaluable when you do this type of experiment.