Figure 4.

Microbiome engineering tools can be used to modify existing functions within the community or to introduce novel functions. These tools vary substantially in scale, from modification of the genome of a single organism to introduction of an entirely new engineered community into the microbiome. Highlighted methods include environmental perturbations such as the addition of a molecular antibiotic or a wild-type or engineered strain or community to an existing microbiome. More recently, genetic engineering efforts and adaptive laboratory evolution, including bacteriophage-assisted gene transfer, increasingly sophisticated synthetic biology tools, and targeted horizontal gene transfer, have gained traction.