21ENGBIO Engineering bacterial 'sense and respond' systems to control microbial communities

在自然界中，细菌通常在多物种群落中共同生长。在社区中发展有许多好处，包括保护免受入侵者入侵，获得额外资源，以及能够共同努力完成任务。基于这些好处，我们希望以多种方式利用工程菌群落来造福于我们。这些应用包括在人类和动物健康和营养方面的应用，例如作为生物医药和帮助减少抗生素的使用；在农业方面，例如改善种子和土壤健康；在生物制造方面，创造更绿色的生物过程；以及作为解决环境挑战的办法，例如通过生物修复。为了安全可靠地使用工程细菌群落，我们需要它们在部署后以可预测的方式运行。不幸的是，我们仍然没有很好地了解细菌群落是如何生长的，特别是当生长环境发生变化时。这导致了不可预测的生长和行为，并阻碍了应用细菌群落的更广泛使用。我们希望通过使用合成生物学来解决这个问题，使细菌群落即使在部署到解决现实世界的应用程序后，其生长和组成也可以控制。我们想象这就像一个调谐旋钮，调高或调低细菌物种的存在，以使群落以某种方式运行，即使生长条件发生了变化。作为这项工作的一部分，我们还将开发新型工具，以感知细菌物种在群落内生长时可获得的营养物质。由于社区内的细菌生长是许多不同研究和开发途径的核心，该项目有可能产生广泛的影响。

In nature, bacteria usually grow together within multi-species communities. Growing in a community has many benefits including protection from invaders, access to extra resources, and the ability to work together to achieve tasks. Based on these benefits, there are many ways that we would like to use communities of engineered bacteria for our benefit. These include applications in human and animal health and nutrition, for example as biomedicines and to help reduce antibiotic usage; in agriculture, for example improving seed and soil health; in biomanufacturing, creating greener bioprocesses; and as solutions to environmental challenges, such as through bioremediation. To safely and reliably use engineered bacterial communities we need them to behave in a predictable way once they are deployed. Unfortunately, we still don't have a good understanding of how communities of bacteria grow, particularly when the growth environment changes. This leads to unpredictable growth and behaviour and holds back more widespread use of applied bacterial communities.We want to solve this problem by using synthetic biology to make bacterial communities whose growth and composition can be controlled even after they are deployed to solve a real-world application. We imagine this like a tuning knob, dialling up or down the presence of a bacterial species to get the community to behave in a certain way, even if the growing conditions have changed. As part of this work, we will also develop new types of tools to sense the nutrients that are available to a bacterial species as it grows within a community. Because bacterial growth within communities is central to many different avenues of research and development, this project has the potential to have wide ranging impacts.