A Delivery Vehicle for Bacteophage-Infected Bacteriophages and its Application to Microbiome-Dependent Diseases

To address these hurdles, Duportet and his colleagues engineered a delivery vehicle using components of a bacteriophage — a virus that infects bacteria — to home in on several E. coli receptors that are expressed in the gut environment. The base editor was specific to E. coli genes. The system was refined to prevent the spread of edited genes.

The next step for Duportet and his colleagues is to develop mouse models with microbiome-driven diseases to measure whether specific gene edits have a beneficial impact on their health.

During breastfeeding, bones are stripped of calcium and oestrogen which helps keep them healthy. This puts bones under tremendous stress, but why they don’t break down at this time has proved a mystery. Now, a team has identified a hormone produced in lactating mice that promotes the build up of bones, keeping them strong during milk production. Injecting this hormone into injured mice helped their bones heal faster, and the team hopes that their finding could ultimately help treat bone-weakening conditions like osteoporosis in humans.

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