Unlike the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the synthetic bacteria in Cheemeng Tan’s lab will not find a way to replicate. As he explains, ‘We will modify our synthetic bacteria using a method that turns them into controllable living micromachines.’ That means clinicians will be able to administer them in a controlled way for medical applications, including delivering medicine within the body, CRISPR-Cas gene editing, killing cancer cells, and administering probiotics and oral vaccines.
