Guest Editors
Vanni Bucci
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems, Program in Microbiome Dynamics, Program in Systems Biology
<p>Dr. Bucci is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems. His lab is focused on developing microbiome-based therapeutics to ameliorate infections, inflammatory and neurological disorders. Dr. Bucci is an engineer and computational biologist by training with extensive experience in microbiology and synthetic biology. He applies methods to predict the dynamics of intestinal commensal and enteropathogenic bacteria, and to optimize bacterial consortia that induce an array of anti-inflammatory responses. Further, he drives the development of novel interpretable machine learning methods to link microbiome dynamics with clinical outcome. On the experimental side his lab develops synthetically engineered probiotics that selectively inhibit growth of pathogenic bacteria to precisely eradicate drug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae including Carbapenem Resistant Klebsiella and ESBL-producing E. coli from the gastrointestinal tract. He currently also serves as Associate Editor for ‘<em>Gut Microbes</em>’, ‘<em>mSystems’</em>, and ‘<em>Microbial Cell</em>’.</p>
Benedikt M. Mortzfeld
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems, Program in Microbiome Dynamics
<p>Dr. Benedikt Mortzfeld earned his degrees from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, Germany, a hotspot for microbiome research in animal models, where he investigated the impact of host genetics on the development, the innate immune system, and microbiome resilience in phylogenetically basal animals while pursuing his doctoral research. During his postdoctoral training at UMass Dartmouth and UMass Chan Medical School Dr. Mortzfeld explores, how bacterial antimicrobial peptides can affect the ecological dynamics in the gut environment and how that knowledge can be utilized to engineer probiotic bacteria to target clinically relevant human pathogens and selectively eradicate them <em>in vivo</em>. He got awarded the Walter-Benjamin postdoctoral fellowship by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and currently also serves as Associate Editor for ‘<em>Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins</em>’.</p>
Collection Overview
Humans, like every other organism, are accompanied by a myriad of viruses, archaea, and bacteria. Besides the well-known pathogenic roles of these microorganisms, they can form close mutualistic associations with their host that are crucial for long-term survival. In synergistic relationships bacteria can provide us with essential nutrients, detoxify harmful substances, maturate our immune system, interact with our nervous system, and as a community form a physical barrier around us that protects us from injury or pathogenic infections. While more functional aspects of our microbiome are uncovered every day, latest research also focuses on the use of beneficial bacteria to prevent, dampen, treat, or cure human diseases like pathogenic infections or metabolic disorders.
This Methods Collection aims to bundle best practices for experiments investigating the use of probiotic bacteria and live biotherapeutics, including those that have been engineered genetically, in microbiome interventions to redirect the host organism towards a healthier state.
Articles
Imaging Flow Cytometry to Study Microbial Autoaggregation
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2023
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1Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2Ilse Kats Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 3Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 4The Scojen institute for synthetic biology, Reichman university