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What if learning a skill wasn’t taught — it was transferred biologically, like passing on a memory?
The Real-World Problem
Training and learning (especially for animals used in research, therapy, or agriculture) is slow, resource-intensive, and inconsistent. Right now, knowledge or skills must be taught repeatedly, and there’s no way to biologically “share” learned behaviors between individuals.
Current Gap
Microbiome research shows gut bacteria can influence mood, cognition, and learning ability — but current approaches (like fecal microbiota transplants) only shift general states (e.g., anxiety, cognition). No existing solution encodes and transfers specific learned behaviors or preferences between individuals or species.
Who Benefits
Animal trainers & farmers: Faster, cheaper training of livestock or working animals.
Neuroscientists: A new tool to explore how learning and memory interact with the gut–brain axis.
Society at large: A potential step toward more efficient, humane training methods and a new way of thinking about biological information transfer.
Why It Matters to Me
I’m fascinated by how biology stores and shares information. Seeing that microbiomes already shape behavior made me wonder: what if we could program them to transfer learned information itself? This could change how we approach training, education, and even data storage.
How It Works (Conceptually)
Engineer gut bacteria with molecular “recorders” (CRISPR spacers or epigenetic switches) that activate during specific learning events.
Introduce these bacteria into a trained donor animal so they “capture” the learning signature.
Transfer these microbes to an untrained recipient (even of another species).
Observe and measure whether the recipient develops the same bias or faster learning of that behavior.
Why It’s Innovative
This goes far beyond today’s microbiome therapies. It’s the first idea to combine engineered bacteria with gut–brain signaling to encode and transfer specific learned behaviors across individuals or species — potentially a new frontier for neuroscience, synthetic biology, and education.
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