Engineering the Human Microbiome Shows Promise for Treating Disease
By Justin L. Sonnenburg,
Scientific American
| 02. 17. 2015
Untitled Document
In the not too distant future each of us will be able to colonize our gut with genetically modified “smart” bacteria that detect and stamp out disease at the earliest possible moment. This scenario may sound like the premise for a sci-fi flick, but it is a very real possibility. Microbiome engineering holds great promise because of advances in the field of synthetic biology, which strives to create and rewire biological organisms so they perform desired tasks. Synthetic biologists are attempting to turn bacterial cells into the biological equivalent of the silicon wafer. These principles have been primarily applied to organisms for biofuel production, but the resulting techniques and genetic tool kit, when applied to our resident microbes, will have profound consequences for human health.
These resident microbes are adept at sensing what food is present, whether any pathogens are lurking and what the inflammatory state of the gut is—their survival depends on it. The model gut-resident bacterial species that we are using in our laboratory for initial tests, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, possesses more than 100 genetic circuits...
Related Articles
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.20.2024
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime.
Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic...
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 03.10.2024
In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert Viault climbed down from a mountain in the Andes, drew blood from his arm and inspected it under a microscope. Dr. Viault’s red blood cells, which ferry oxygen, had surged 42 percent. He...
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga, The Scientist | 03.15.2024
Scientists have genetically modified isolated microbes for decades. Now, using CRISPR, they intend to target entire microbiomes.
Humans are never alone. Even in a room devoid of other people, they are always in the company of billions of microscopic beings...