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Updated: Sep 6, 2025
Engineering Adherent Bacteria by Creating a Single Synthetic Curli Operon
Published on: November 16, 2012
Engineering the human gut commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron with synthetic biology
Yong Lai1, Naoki Hayashi2, Timothy K Lu3
1Synthetic Biology Group, MIT Synthetic Biology Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Abstract:
The role of the microbiome in health and disease is attracting the attention of researchers seeking to engineer microorganisms for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Recent progress in synthetic biology may enable the dissection of host-microbiota interactions. Sophisticated genetic circuits that can sense, compute, memorize, and respond to signals have been developed for the stable commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, dominant in the human gut. In this review, we highlight recent advances in expanding the genetic toolkit for B. thetaiotaomicron and foresee several applications of this species for microbiome engineering. We provide our perspective on the challenges and future opportunities for the engineering of human gut-associated bacteria as living therapeutic agents.
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