You transform an E. coli bacterium with the pGLO plasmid. After growing the +pGLO bacteria on an LB+Ampicillin+Arabinose plate, you see distinct colonies form after 16 hours. You check these colonies under the UV light and see that they are glowing a bright fluorescent green color. If you use a sterile loop and inoculate a new plate with LB+Ampicillin+Arabinose (coated on them, as usual) with these transformed E. coli will you see any growth? If there is growth, will it glow?

pGLO plasmid was engineered to be used as a vector in the field of biotechnology. It has an ampicillin resistance gene which acts as a reporter gene. It also has another reporter gene, GFP which shares its promoter (araC) with the gene responsible for metabolizing arabinose. GFP gene is thus translated only in the presence of arabinose in the medium since the promoter is active only in the presence of arabinose. Once the GFP gene is translated, the colonies glow with green fluorescence under UV light.

Here, the E.Coli colonies were grown successfully on LB + Ampicillin + Arabinose plate so they were ampicillin resistant. They also glowed in UV light. If these transformed colonies are inoculated in another LB + Ampicillin + Arabinose plate they will be able to grow successfully since they are ampicillin resistant. They will also glow because the new plate also has arabinose so the araC promoter will be active and expression of both GFP gene and arabinose metabolizing gene will occur.