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Burgeoning research on the human microbiome is facilitating the development of more mechanistically driven probiotics. Charles Schmidt investigates a smattering of probiotic- and microbiota-modifying therapeutic opportunities arising from commercial efforts.
With acquisition the most likely exit for today's biotech investors, it pays to keep current with the tastes of pharmaceutical firms when launching a venture.
Open collaboration on biomedical discoveries requires a fundamental shift in the traditional roles and rewards for both investigators and participants in research.
Nine experts discuss the challenges in translating current research on the human microbiome into strategies for disease prediction, diagnosis and therapy.
Five years after the launch of the Human Microbiome Project, several ventures are seeking to capitalize on the clinical promise of microbiome modulation. Commercialization of drugs that influence the human flora poses some unique scientific, translational and regulatory challenges.
The entire metabolic pathway for producing a biofuel is confined within a yeast organelle to increase yield over the endogenous pathway split between two compartments.
Genes that cause a mutant phenotype are efficiently identified from genetic screens of model and non-model organisms from whole-genome sequencing data without requiring segregating populations, genetic maps and reference sequences.
A library of in vitro translated human proteins tethered to their encoding mRNAs is used for unbiased discovery of interactions with immobilized proteins, autoantibodies or small molecules.
A computational pipeline identifies genetic variants that affect transcriptional responses to stimuli, and uses this information to refine molecular circuits.
Bacteria expressing a plant siRNA-binding protein produce potent, specific and nonimmunogenic siRNAs capable of knocking down target genes in mammalian cells.
Integrating metabolomics and computational modeling provides a method to identify allosteric enzyme-metabolite interactions, which have been inaccessible to systematic mapping.
Researchers have generated more than 3.5 terabytes of human microbiome genomic information – more than 1,000 times that generated by the Human Genome Project. This Focus highlights progress in microbiome research and how these data might translate into a better understanding of human diseases and rational design of new therapies.