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。在社区中成长有很多好处，包括免受入侵者的侵害，获得额外的资源，以及共同努力完成任务的能力。基于这些好处，我们有很多方法可以利用工程细菌群落来造福我们。这包括在人类和动物健康和营养方面的应用，例如生物医学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；在生物制造领域，创造更环保的生物工艺；作为解决环境挑战的方法，比如通过生物修复。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表现。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制造细菌群落来解决这个问题，这些细菌群落的生长和组成即使在它们被部署到解决现实世界的应用程序之后也可以被控制。我们把它想象成一个调谐旋钮，调节细菌种类的存在，以使群落以某种方式行事，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来感知细菌物种在群落中生长时可用的营养物质。由于细菌在群落内的生长是许多不同研究和开发途径的核心，因此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.