Warren C. Ruder of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia talks with Jeff Fox about efforts to develop an electronic model system that incorporates a robot for a host and two slightly different kinds of simulated bacteria for its microbiome.

The model carries an engineered bacterial population onboard to stand in for the microbiome, while the robot serves as a proxy for an animal host. When conditions are changed a bit, and the robot is made to send signals to its virtual microbiome, the robot’s behavior changes rather dramatically, making it look very much like the microbiome is pulling the robot’s “strings,” dictating to the host what to do next. This model system carries implications for fields ranging from synthetic biology and ecology to mobile robotics, according to Ruder and his collaborators. Details appeared in the July 2015 Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/srep11988.)

This story was featured in the November 2015 issue of Microbe magazine.