E coli delivering serotonin

Intriguing article by a group at Columbia and TU Denmark Lingby: orally delivered E. coli Nissle 1917, a workhorse of synthetic biology and the preferred chassis in a number of attempts for human therapeutics, can reach the large intestine where it delivers its engineered payload of serotonin.

"Mice treated with serotonin-producing bacteria exhibited biological changes in the gut at transcriptional and physiological levels." There is a lot there to unpack, but very promising to delivering biosynthetic products to the colon.

"This work establishes a novel framework employing engineered bacteria to modulate luminal serotonin levels and suggests potential clinical applications of modified microbial therapeutics to address gut disorders in humans."