Engineering in living communities
Mechanisms for engineering microbial communities.
Three mechanisms for editing microbes where they already live: delivering genetic cargo, writing DNA at a chosen site, and disarming a pathogen without removing it.
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The gut microbial community
Microbes live packed alongside one another in the gut. We build tools that edit them there, without pulling them out first.
Deliver genetic cargo in place
Conjugative delivery hands genetic cargo from one cell to another inside a living community, with no isolation and no culturing step. This is the MAGIC approach.
Make targeted, multiplexable insertions
CRISPR-associated transposases place DNA at a chosen site with no Cas9 double-strand break and no homologous recombination. This is INTEGRATE.
BACTRINS
Stop toxin production. Add a protective protein.
Change a microbe’s genetic instructions and you change what it makes. In this example, tested in mice, a toxin gene is disabled and instructions for a protective protein are inserted in its place.
Explore biotherapeutic researchScroll to follow the change, or select a stage.
A gene drives toxin production.
Red marks the toxin gene and the toxin proteins; green marks the inserted DNA and the new protein.
Primary literature
Animations are conceptual, built from the mechanisms reported in these papers.