Health Science Reviews

By Abi Milella

The gut microbiome was once seen as a mysterious and untouchable ecosystem but it is now being increasingly recognised as a central player in nearly all aspects of human health. It influences everything from digestion and immunity to mental well-being and chronic disease. Understanding and harnessing the gut microbiome could transform how we treat and prevent disease.

The human gut consists of trillions of bacterial cells that all coexist as a peaceful and balanced community that benefits us as their host – these are the good bugs and we need them. Any disruption in this balance leads to gut chaos and crappy consequences… The gut’s oxygen-free environment, its complexity and limited accessibility make it extremely challenging to treat disorders and identify the key microbes. Current treatments leave much to be desired. Probiotics are only as effective as the number of cultures that actually reach the gut, which is difficult to control, and the success of the establishment of colonies is even more uncertain. Fecal Microbiota Transplants are as gruesome as they sound involving the direct transplantation of human fecal matter from a healthy individual to an individual with an unhealthy gut microbiome – yikes. While often successful, they carry risks, and the difficulty of managing all variables is pushing scientists to develop more controlled treatments.

Enter: Synthetic Microbial Communities – a hand-picked collection of microbes designed in the lab to mimic the functions of a natural microbiome. Much like coaches picking their best players to win a game, scientists build “teams” of bacteria that work together to study gut functions or treat gut disorders. I like to imagine scientists designing SynComs the way I used to play with Barbies, mixing and matching to see which bacteria work well together and which don’t.

SynComs have many cool uses and are fast becoming the go-to tools for studying gut functions. In medicine, they are being tested to treat gut infections, inflammatory bowel disease and even metabolic issues. In research, SynComs are being used in germ-free mice (devoid of all microorganisms) to study gut functions, immunity, and how drugs (such as antibiotics), diet and nasty bugs affect the microbiome. The future of SynComs is bright and heading towards personalised designs and compositions that are tailored to individual microbiomes or for specific diseases. I can picture it now, soon we’ll be picking bacteria from a menu, just like at brunch, to build-a-gut that suits us perfectly! Synthetic Microbial Communities (SynComs) offer an exciting, controllable and adaptable alternative to traditional gut treatments. By carefully selecting and combining bacterial strains with specific beneficial functions, scientists are essentially engineering “dream teams” of microbes to improve gut health. The idea of “build-a-gut” might sound silly now, but it represents the beginning of the journey of SynComs and their role in shaping the future of gastrointestinal medicine.