![]() But other experimental approaches are needed to understand the underlying mechanisms for how interactions between the gut microbiota and the host affect human health and disease. The results have uncovered associations between disruptions to the human gut microbiota and many different diseases – including inflammatory bowel disease, cancer and neurodevelopmental disorders. These have largely used next-generation sequencing approaches to provide a snapshot of the type and abundance of species in these microbial communities, drawing relationships between healthy and disease states. In recent years, there has been a surge of studies revealing that the trillions of microbes living in and on our bodies play a vital role in maintaining good health. ![]() To help drive future progress, synthetic biologists are beginning to take advantage of machine learning approaches – which can be used to help inform design, such as by generating novel components or suggesting the best experiments to perform. We need to dramatically expand this toolkit through synthesis and biomining efforts.” “Secondly, we still have a pretty anemic library of biological parts – to the order of a few dozen that have been reused and repurposed in the last two decades. “There are two big challenges – the first is that we still don’t have a broad set of design principles for biology – and that means that its complexity can still get in the way of our best design plans,” explains Collins. But in practice, these bioengineering approaches are not always straightforward. Engineering principles are then used to design and construct these biological parts into new systems for a wide variety of industrial, agricultural, pharmaceutical and environmental applications. The underlying premise of synthetic biology is that living systems can be broken down into a library of individual components. ![]() “The combination of these tools has provided us with unprecedented opportunities to apply synthetic biology to study living systems and understand how they work,” states Riglar.
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