Paula Polo Yanez, Claudia Ramos Alvarez, Alberto Ruiz López Alvarado and Jorge Riego de la Puente.
September 4th 2018
Our body is a complex machine that when functioning generates toxins, which aren’t usually a big deal, because our body is able to naturally break them down. Sadly, there are some people who lack this capacity due to rare genetic disorders; that is why synthetic biology has been a breakthrough for them.
Scientist that have been engineering bacteria, have focused their studies on producing molecules like antibiotics, but in recent years the focus has changed to a new approach; microbes that are able to enter our body and treat us from the inside.
A team was able to create a bacterium with engineered genes that would break down phenylalanine, which is a molecule that people with PKU (a rare genetic disease) cannot get rid of naturally. The process is simple, as described by the synthetic biology company which is exploiting the technology: the microbes break down phenylalanine only in the right place and at the right time in the human body. So, they engineered the bacteria to keep their phenylalanine genes shut down if they sensed high levels of oxygen around them. Therefore, manipulated bacteria’s DNA to ensure that, when they arrived in the gut, they could emulate the normal function of our own cells and break down phenylalanine. One of the new genes encodes a pump that the bacteria uptakes the amino acid around them, that will be broken down by the action of an enzyme encoded by a second gene. The bacteria then release the fragments, which get washed out in urine.
These bacteria were first tested on mice with the disease, after obtaining positive results they proceeded to test it on healthy monkeys and then on healthy humans. Their next step is to see if it works in human patients with PKU. This study has led scientist to new areas of microbial engineering, like bacteria that are able to make their way into tumors and attract immune cells in order to kill the cancer. It is still a huge field to be studied and with great potential to find new ways to use microorganisms to our benefit.
Keywords: #bacterialengineering #biotechnology #microbiology
Zimmer, C. (2018). Scientists Are Retooling Bacteria to Cure Disease. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/health/synthetic-biology-pku.htmlLast visit: September 29th2018.
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