From 2006.igem.org

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Intro

Cell generation counter.

Principle

A counter somehow triggered by cell division that allows the experimentator to trace down the number of generation.

The telomere approach

In somatic mamalian cells, the telomeres cannot be copied in their full length by the polymerases, because they copy in one direction and so they would need to start *after* the end to copy the ends. That is somewhat the worse explanation you will ever read about this phenomenon, so googling a bit about "telomere" and say, "aging", won't harm you at this point. Is there a way to use this trick in bacteria? The problem is far from trivial since

1. bacteria usually digest linear DNA
2. it is difficult to insure that that DNA gets only replicated once per generation (as plasmid tend to have asynchronous replication cycles?!?)

Maybe the idea should be implemented in yeast?

Discussion

>> for comments, questions and temporary remarks go to the Talk:Editing_Generation_Counter

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