(79c) Programming Animal Physiology and Behaviors through Engineered Bacteria

Programming animal physiology or behaviors hold great promise for agriculture, stock living, and human health applications. However, animal physiology and behavior programming usually needs complicated, sometimes impossible, efforts. Animals share an intimate and lifelong partnership with microbes. We present an engineered bacteria-based system to recognize external signals and to modulate animal fat metabolism/feeding behaviors. By engineering genetic circuits in bacteria to control RNA and metabolites expression, we were able to program physiology and behaviors of our model animal Caenorhabditis elegans using “AND”, “OR” and “NOR” gates. They were achieved through bacteria - C. elegans orthogonal gene transfer or metabolites modulation. Using this platform, we anticipated further interference of animal, including humans, metabolites and behavior correction for therapeutic, diagnostic and basic science applications.