A Toolbox for Microbiome Engineering

It has been clear for a while that the first medical nanorobots would in fact be medical microrobots, engineered microbes or cells or entirely artificial pseudo-cells capable of being programmed to perform an array of tasks. Small molecule drug manufactories with on/off switches are the easier first goal, and once that is a robust technology platform then moving on to provide a basis for spot improvements on antibody production in the immune system is an obvious next step.

There is still a great deal of work needed to determine which useful small molecule drugs for cellular manufactories to produce, however. I suspect we're moving into a phase of development in which the capacity to deliver small molecules will outstrip the capacity to identify/invent/determine useful ones, as a lot more must be known to produce the drug than to produce the manufactory and delivery mechanism. Hence antibody production as an early target, since those are much more readily categorized.

I'm glad to see the synthetic bio folks making progress down this path. I hope that the ecologists can catch up so we can develop a better understanding of human microecology. Control and regulation of the ecosystem that is a human is likely to provide as many, if not more, tangible benefits to more people than any direct genetic engineering of human beings.