About this Research Topic
Humans ingest many small molecules from various sources, including dietary components, environmental chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. The group of microorganisms that inhabit our gastrointestinal tract (the human gut microbiota) metabolize many of these small molecules. Consequently, the gut microbiota has the potential to complement human metabolism by converting our daily dietary intake into molecules that are beneficial to human health. In addition, the composition of the gut microbiome has profound effects on the physiological functions of the host, including metabolism, immunity and behavioral responses, and performance. In vivo production and delivery of therapeutics by microorganisms has several advantages over traditional systemic treatment, since they can be designed to perform specific actions in the human body. Therefore, there is a growing interest in developing microbe-based therapeutics to target microbiomes as a novel therapeutic strategy for health and performance.
The overall goal of this Research Topic is to collect recent advances in the development of microbial-based systems for therapeutic application using various synthetic biology driven approaches. Briefly, this Research Topic will cover any useful and effective strategies for the development of microbial-based systems to have therapeutic activity or improve overall performance. In particular, new findings, new methods, challenges, and future perspectives for microbial-based systems that can or exert therapeutic activity via host-microbe or microbe-microbiome interactions will be welcomed in this Research Topic. In addition, microbes that can functionalize foods we eat into a potential therapeutic modality can be covered in this Topic.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective, and Opinion articles. We particularly welcome articles on, but not limited to, the following topics:
• Development and optimization of genetic editing tools in probiotics (e.g. lactic acid bacteria or yeast) or commensal microbes.
• Metabolic engineering of microbes or yeast for improving the synthetic capability of desired therapeutic agents including but not limited to nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and bioactive peptides/proteins.
• Bioconversion of natural compounds into therapeutic compounds using microbial or yeast systems.
• Engineer microbes to have programmable behavior to promote human health and performance.
• Engineer microbes to modulate the function of microbiome
The overall goal of this Research Topic is to collect recent advances in the development of microbial-based systems for therapeutic application using various synthetic biology driven approaches. Briefly, this Research Topic will cover any useful and effective strategies for the development of microbial-based systems to have therapeutic activity or improve overall performance. In particular, new findings, new methods, challenges, and future perspectives for microbial-based systems that can or exert therapeutic activity via host-microbe or microbe-microbiome interactions will be welcomed in this Research Topic. In addition, microbes that can functionalize foods we eat into a potential therapeutic modality can be covered in this Topic.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective, and Opinion articles. We particularly welcome articles on, but not limited to, the following topics:
• Development and optimization of genetic editing tools in probiotics (e.g. lactic acid bacteria or yeast) or commensal microbes.
• Metabolic engineering of microbes or yeast for improving the synthetic capability of desired therapeutic agents including but not limited to nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and bioactive peptides/proteins.
• Bioconversion of natural compounds into therapeutic compounds using microbial or yeast systems.
• Engineer microbes to have programmable behavior to promote human health and performance.
• Engineer microbes to modulate the function of microbiome
Keywords: Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, live biotherapeutics, prebiotics, probiotic engineering, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
