Common principles and best practices for engineering microbiomes

Despite broad scientific interest in harnessing the power of Earth's microbiomes, knowledge gaps hinder their efficient use for addressing urgent societal and environmental challenges. We argue that structuring research and technology developments around a design-build-test-learn (DBTL) cycle w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature reviews. Microbiology Vol. 17; no. 12; pp. 725 - 741
Main Authors: Lawson, Christopher E, Harcombe, William R, Hatzenpichler, Roland, Lindemann, Stephen R, Löffler, Frank E, O'Malley, Michelle A, García Martín, Héctor, Pfleger, Brian F, Raskin, Lutgarde, Venturelli, Ophelia S, Weissbrodt, David G, Noguera, Daniel R, McMahon, Katherine D
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Nature Publishing Group 01.12.2019
Subjects:
Agriculture
Agriculture - methods
Animal health
Best practice
Bioelectric Energy Sources
Bioengineering - methods
Biological Therapy - methods
Biotechnology
Construction methods
Engineering
Environmental Microbiology
Guidelines as Topic
Humans
Microbiomes
Microbiota
Practice Guidelines as Topic
Principles
Self-assembly
ISSN:1740-1526, 1740-1534, 1740-1534
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Despite broad scientific interest in harnessing the power of Earth's microbiomes, knowledge gaps hinder their efficient use for addressing urgent societal and environmental challenges. We argue that structuring research and technology developments around a design-build-test-learn (DBTL) cycle will advance microbiome engineering and spur new discoveries of the basic scientific principles governing microbiome function. In this Review, we present key elements of an iterative DBTL cycle for microbiome engineering, focusing on generalizable approaches, including top-down and bottom-up design processes, synthetic and self-assembled construction methods, and emerging tools to analyse microbiome function. These approaches can be used to harness microbiomes for broad applications related to medicine, agriculture, energy and the environment. We also discuss key challenges and opportunities of each approach and synthesize them into best practice guidelines for engineering microbiomes. We anticipate that adoption of a DBTL framework will rapidly advance microbiome-based biotechnologies aimed at improving human and animal health, agriculture and enabling the bioeconomy.
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ISSN:1740-1526
1740-1534
1740-1534
DOI:10.1038/s41579-019-0255-9