Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota

Engineering commensal organisms for challenging applications, such as modulating the gut ecosystem, is hampered by the lack of genetic parts. Here, we describe promoters, ribosome-binding sites, and inducible systems for use in the commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, a prevalent and st...

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Main Authors: Tucker, Alex C., Voigt, Christopher A., Lu, Timothy K, Mimee, Mark Kyle
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Elsevier 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107264
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3083-2671
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-4776
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9999-6690
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author Tucker, Alex C.
Voigt, Christopher A.
Lu, Timothy K
Mimee, Mark Kyle
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Tucker, Alex C.
Voigt, Christopher A.
Lu, Timothy K
Mimee, Mark Kyle
author_sort Tucker, Alex C.
collection MIT
description Engineering commensal organisms for challenging applications, such as modulating the gut ecosystem, is hampered by the lack of genetic parts. Here, we describe promoters, ribosome-binding sites, and inducible systems for use in the commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, a prevalent and stable resident of the human gut. We achieve up to 10,000-fold range in constitutive gene expression and 100-fold regulation of gene expression with inducible promoters and use these parts to record DNA-encoded memory in the genome. We use CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) for regulated knockdown of recombinant and endogenous gene expression to alter the metabolic capacity of B. thetaiotaomicron and its resistance to antimicrobial peptides. Finally, we show that inducible CRISPRi and recombinase systems can function in B. thetaiotaomicron colonizing the mouse gut. These results provide a blueprint for engineering new chassis and a resource to engineer Bacteroides for surveillance of or therapeutic delivery to the gut microbiome.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1072642022-09-27T16:05:05Z Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota Tucker, Alex C. Voigt, Christopher A. Lu, Timothy K Mimee, Mark Kyle Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Mimee, Mark K Tucker, Alex C. Voigt, Christopher A. Lu, Timothy K Engineering commensal organisms for challenging applications, such as modulating the gut ecosystem, is hampered by the lack of genetic parts. Here, we describe promoters, ribosome-binding sites, and inducible systems for use in the commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, a prevalent and stable resident of the human gut. We achieve up to 10,000-fold range in constitutive gene expression and 100-fold regulation of gene expression with inducible promoters and use these parts to record DNA-encoded memory in the genome. We use CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) for regulated knockdown of recombinant and endogenous gene expression to alter the metabolic capacity of B. thetaiotaomicron and its resistance to antimicrobial peptides. Finally, we show that inducible CRISPRi and recombinase systems can function in B. thetaiotaomicron colonizing the mouse gut. These results provide a blueprint for engineering new chassis and a resource to engineer Bacteroides for surveillance of or therapeutic delivery to the gut microbiome. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant EEC-0540879) National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grants P50GM098792, 1DP2OD008435, 1R01EB017755, and GM095765) United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant CLIO N66001-12-C-4016) United States. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (Grant HDTRA1-14-1-0007) United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-13-1-0424) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics QUALCOMM Inc. (Innovation Fellowship) 2017-03-09T19:52:36Z 2017-03-09T19:52:36Z 2015-07 2015-05 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2405-4712 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107264 Mimee, Mark et al. “Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides Thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota.” Cell Systems 1.1 (2015): 62–71. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3083-2671 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-4776 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9999-6690 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2015.06.001 Cell Systems Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf Elsevier PMC
spellingShingle Tucker, Alex C.
Voigt, Christopher A.
Lu, Timothy K
Mimee, Mark Kyle
Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title_full Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title_fullStr Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title_full_unstemmed Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title_short Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota
title_sort programming a human commensal bacterium bacteroides thetaiotaomicron to sense and respond to stimuli in the murine gut microbiota
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107264
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3083-2671
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-4776
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9999-6690
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