Microbes on the genetic frontier

“A genetically transformed strain of bacteria takes on a bluish cast as a signal that synthetic coding was incorporated into the cell’s genetic machinery.”
Someday, microbiomes just might give us a world where crude oil is grown like a crop, where vaccines for new flu strains can be produced in days instead of months, and where physicians can tweak the bacteria in your gut to cure what ails you. At least that’s the promise held out by genomics pioneer Craig Venter.
A decade ago, Venter was among a cadre of researchers who first decoded the human genome — in Venter’s case, his own. Today, as the head of the J. Craig Venter institute, he’s among a cadre of researchers who are not only working out the implications of that genetic code for our daily lives, but also studying how to tweak the genetic codes of the myriad microbes that surround us — and in some cases, live within us. The makeup of those microbial communities is what scientists refer to a “microbiome.”