From here:

Justin Gallivan, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry, and graduate student Shana Topp successfully reprogrammed E. coli’s chemo-navigational system to detect, follow and precisely localize to specific chemical signals. In doing so, the scientists exploited E. coli’s natural chemotaxis, a microbe’s ability to move toward specific chemicals in its environment.

“Equipping bacteria with a way to degrade pollutants, synthesize and release therapeutics, or transport chemicals with an ability to localize to a specific chemical signal would open new frontiers in environmental cleanup, drug delivery and synthetic biology,” says Dr. Gallivan.

[…]

Chemotactic bacteria navigate chemical environments by coupling their information-processing capabilities to powerful, tiny molecular motors that propel the cells forward.

Researchers have long envisioned reprogramming bacteria so that microbes capable of synthesizing an anti-cancer drug, for instance, can be used to target diseased cells while sparing healthy cells of side effects. Likewise, scientists are researching ways to use bacteria to clean up oil spills or remove other pollutants from soil, water and wastewater.

“This new ability to equip motile bacteria with a precise and tunable chemo-navigation system will greatly enhance the impressive arsenal of natural and engineered cell behaviors,” says Dr. Gallivan.

Such research teaches us two things.

1. Design and evolution can indeed co-exist. To sufficiently account for the existence of these bacteria, we must appeal to a) their evolutionary history and b) the researcher’s design. This may seem too obvious to have to point out, but given that so many think that design is somehow contradictory to evolution, it is important to establish this principle of co-existence.

2. It is intriguing that these bacteria can so easily be re-designed. The reprogramming of these bacteria involved minor tweaking that was facilitated by the inherent properties of the bacteria. Remember that natural selection itself cares only about one thing – turning out more survivable offspring than the next fellow. Whether such an approach to “design” is responsible for such a sophisticated, “reprogrammable” system is not clear.