Synthetic microbiology: from analogy to methodology

A pilot oral history of plant synthetic biology

The whole field of synthetic biology (SynBio) is only about 20 years old, and plant SynBio is younger still. Nevertheless, within that short time, SynBio in general has drawn more scientific, philosophical, government, and private-sector interest than anything in biology since the recombinant DNA revolution. Plant SynBio, in particular, is now drawing more and more interest in relation to plants' potential to help solve planetary problems such as carbon capture and storage and replacing fossil fuels and feedstocks. As plant SynBio is so young and so fast-developing, we felt it was too soon to try to analyze its history. Instead, we set out to capture the essence of plant SynBio's origins and early development through interviews with 8 of the field's founders, representing 5 countries and 3 continents. We then distilled these founders' personal recollections and reflections into this review, centering the narrative on timelines for pivotal events, articles, funding programs, and quoting from interviews. We have archived the interview recordings and documented timeline entries. This work provides a resource for future historical scholarship.

Pattern Engineering of Living Bacterial Colonies Using Meniscus-Driven Fluidic Channels

Creating adaptive, sustainable, and dynamic biomaterials is a forthcoming mission of synthetic biology. Engineering spatially organized bacterial communities has a potential to develop such bio-metamaterials. However, generating living patterns with precision, robustness, and a low technical barrier remains as a challenge. Here we present an easily implementable technique for patterning live bacterial populations using a controlled meniscus-driven fluidics system, named as MeniFluidics. We demonstrate multiscale patterning of biofilm colonies and swarms with submillimeter resolution. Utilizing the faster bacterial spreading in liquid channels, MeniFluidics allows controlled bacterial colonies both in space and time to organize fluorescently labeled Bacillus subtilis strains into a converged pattern and to form dynamic vortex patterns in confined bacterial swarms. The robustness, accuracy, and low technical barrier of MeniFluidics offer a tool for advancing and inventing new living materials that can be combined with genetically engineered systems, and adding to fundamental research into ecological, evolutional, and physical interactions between microbes.

Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria as an Effective Tool for Sustainable Acid Mine Bioremediation

Mining industries produce vast waste streams that pose severe environmental pollution challenge. Conventional techniques of treatment are usually inefficient and unsustainable. Biological technique employing the use of microorganisms is a competitive alternative to treat mine wastes and recover toxic heavy metals. Microorganisms are used to detoxify, extract or sequester pollutants from mine waste. Sulfate-reducing microorganisms play a vital role in the control and treatment of mine waste, generating alkalinity and neutralizing the acidic waste. The design of engineered sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) consortia will be an effective tool in optimizing degradation of acid mine tailings waste in industrial processes. The understanding of the complex functions of SRB consortia vis-à-vis the metabolic and physiological properties in industrial applications and their roles in interspecies interactions are discussed.