Glance at potential future combating of diseases:Bioengineered antimicrobial organisms

Abstract

The incidence of diseases is on the surge as exemplified by the recent occurrence in West Africa of Ebola Virus (EBOV) and increase of Zika Virus in Brazil. These pathogens have evolved strategies to evade the human immune system and thus continue to be globally important human pathogens. Bioengineering capabilities are on the increase with rapid advances in synthetic biology and allied technologies (nanobiotechnology, nanotechnology, OMICs technologies, and genetic engineering) which bring potential future prospects in combating disease causing agents using the knowledge of pathogenesis of these disease causing agents. This paper specifically takes a forward looking approach in proposing a potential future use of bioengineering technologies to combat disease causing pathogens as exemplified by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola Virus (EBOV), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis through the design, building and testing of synthetic bioengineered minimal genomes with pathogen neutralising capabilities and pathogen detection sensitivity similar to whole cell based biosensors. Key words: Tuberculosis, Ebola, AIDS, synthetic biology, omics, biosensors, nanotechnology