UK Institute of Microbiome Engineering

生活在我们体内的微生物会影响我们的健康和福祉。研究表明，微生物群的变化与炎症性疾病、糖尿病、肥胖症、癌症和心理健康有关。他们还可以决定治疗的有效性以及我们从手术中恢复的情况。微生物群也已成为一个价值数十亿美元的产业，制药和诊断公司竞相占领个性化药物市场。尽管取得了这些进展，但我们对宿主和微生物群之间的相互作用的了解仍然很原始，因为我们没有工具来定量地询问这些系统。在这里，我们概述了一项建议，即建立一个世界领先的多学科、多中心的英国微生物组工程研究所。该研究所将利用生物学--系统和合成生物学--的尖端工程方法，以坚定的方式影响和修改微生物区系。这项投资将在未来30年对NHS产生巨大而重大的影响，影响医院治疗、家庭保健、疾病预防、心理健康和福祉。

he microbes that live within us influence our health and wellbeing. Research has shown changes in the microbiome are linked with inflammatory diseases, diabetes, obesity, cancer and mental health. They can also determine how effective treatments are and how well we recover from surgery. The microbiome has also become a multi-billion-dollar industry, with drug and diagnostic companies racing to capture the market for personalised medicine.Despite these advances, our understanding of the interactions between the host and the microbiota remain primitive as we do not have the tools to interrogate these systems in a quantitative manner. Here we outline a proposal to build a world- leading multi-disciplinary and multi-centre UK Institute for Microbiome Engineering. This institute will leverage cutting-edge engineering approaches to biology - systems and synthetic biology - to influence and modify the microbiota in well determined ways. This investment will have a huge and significant impact for the NHS over the next 30 years, influencing hospital treatment, home healthcare, disease prevention, mental health and wellbeing.