Keio University Human Biology-Microbiome-Quantum Research Center (WPI-Bio2Q) held a seminar as follows.

Thursday, 17:00 -18:00 July 24, 2025

Venue: 1F Lounge, Center for Integrated Medical Research, Shinanomachi Campus, Keio University

Speaker:
Harris Wang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Systems Biology, Columbia University, USA

Title：“Next-generation synthetic biology to improve health and beyond”

The microbiome spans all parts of the biosphere. Microbes that colonize the gastrointestinal tract play important roles in host metabolism, immunity, and homeostasis, while others that live in soil are responsible for key decomposition and remediation activities. Synthetic biology offers a new path to study and alter these microbiomes to unlock their vast potential to improve human health and the environment. This talk will describe our recent efforts to develop next-generation synthetic biology advances to study and modify microbial communities. I will discuss new platforms for AI-enabled microbial culturomics and CRISPR-based techniques to genetically modify the gut microbiome. Moreover, I will describe our recent efforts to use machine learning models to recode the bacterial genome towards life with a more minimalized genetic alphabet. These emerging capabilities provide a foundation to accelerate the development of synthetic biology products and therapies.