A research team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), using a synthetic biology approach, has developed an engineered live biotherapeutic product (eLBP) that, when given together with commonly used antibiotics known as beta-lactams (which includes the well-known antibiotic penicillin), protects the gut microbiome from dysbiosis. The study is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Machine-learning algorithms for protein structure prediction can now generate models directly from sequences. However, photosynthetic assemblies represent a challenge due to additional levels of complexity arising from their multi-protein nature and presence of cofactors.