Engineering microbial consortia through synthetic biology approach / 生物工程学报

There are a large number of natural microbial communities in nature. Different populations inside the consortia expand the performance boundary of a single microbial population through communication and division of labor, reducing the overall metabolic burden and increasing the environmental adaptability. Based on engineering principles, synthetic biology designs or modifies basic functional components, gene circuits, and chassis cells to purposefully reprogram the operational processes of the living cells, achieving rich and controllable biological functions. Introducing this engineering design principle to obtain structurally well-defined synthetic microbial communities can provide ideas for theoretical studies and shed light on versatile applications. This review discussed recent progresses on synthetic microbial consortia with regard to design principles, construction methods and applications, and prospected future perspectives.

Mechanism Study on Active Ingredients of Danggui Shaoyao San for Treating Alzheimer's Disease Based on Biological Network / 世界科学技术-中医药现代化

Objective: To study the mechanism of action of Danggui Shaoyao San (DSS) in the treatment of Alzheimer'sdisease (AD) from a systematic network level using network pharmacology. Methods: The active ingredients of DSS intreating AD was screened from the Traditional Chinese Medicine System Pharmacology Database (TCSMP), and thedrugs-targets-disease network was built. Target organ localization network, GO analysis and Pathway enrichmentanalysis were used for bioinformatics analysis. Results: 51 kinds of DSS active ingredients were screened by networkpharmacology, showing 377 predicted targets of active compounds. Among them, 197 targets were associated with AD, and the pharmacodynamic targets of DSS active compounds were highly enriched with AD-related signals. The pathwaywas closely related to the reduction of Aβ aggregation and inhibition of tau hyperphosphorylation and biological processessuch as anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptosis, and the mRNA expression of the targeted gene was mainly enriched in theliver, heart, and brain. Conclusion: DSS active compounds interact with multiple targets in multiple ways in a synergisticmanner, mainly to produce important therapeutic effects on AD with anti-inflammatory, anti-apoptotic, enhancingmetabolism and immune system.