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The bacterium E. coli is popularly called as the pet of the scientists.

The current significance on the variety of global energy sources, while minimizing the fossil fuel consumption, has sited new interest on hydrogen as an alternative fuel and its production through bioconversions that are mediated by microbes. Escherichia coli (strain ZF1) are currently being used in the production of hydrogen under anaerobic growth conditions.

Genetic engineering of plants also utilizes Escherichia coli. They are often used to generate numerous copies of a gene construct that is finally transferred into a plant.

Microbial colonies of E. coli are grown deliberately to form images as they are fast reproducing and generally harmless, that is images are made by simply painting a petri dish with E. coli and allowing it to grow called as microbial art. Scientists have also engineered the jelly fish DNA to E. coli making them glow and utilizing as a photo paper.

E. coli transcriptor has been developed by the researchers utilizing DNA and Enzymes. This is a potential step towards building working computers within living cells (Bio-Computers) that could be programmed to control gene expression in an organism.

E. coli are used to generate cancer-fighting drugs. One of the projects manipulated E. coli microorganism to carry an enzyme that fights cancer. Researchers are also working on a method of nanobots that would contain E. coli programmed with instructions to attack cancer cells, so that when a nanobot finds a tumour, it is able to dispatch speedy bacteria to call the other nanobots to it.

E. coli are engineered to generate biodiesel as a potential means of generating renewable energy. The genetic makeup of E. coli cells are manipulated to produce biodiesel derived from fatty acids. It is generally accepted that producing fuel from food sources such as corn is not very worthy as it is too costly and it competes with our sources of food. One of the alternative ways is to alter the E. coli cells to make it overproduce fatty acids, which are utilized in the production of biodiesel.