Sequencing DNA, carrying the text of the genome
programs (the instructions that allow the construction
of all living organisms as well as their daily life),
allows investigators to understand biology globally, in
an integrated way. However this supposes that one is
able to reconstruct life, using the knowledge
accumulated over the years, in particular in the past
decades.
Nothing is better than trying to reconstruct something
in order to see that one has not forgotten anything
essential. In the case of living organisms this view has
produced two complementary disciplines, systems biology
and synthetic biology. We have chosen to name the
association of these two approaches "symplectic biology"
to emphasize that this is a novel and revolutionary
entreprise. The word "symplectic" in fact is the same as
"complex" in latin, but in greek, and it does not carry
the fuzzy connotations of the latter, that are usually
the cause of much confusion.
AMAbiotics uses this engineering way to explore the
complementarity between the metabolism of the host
(human beings in our first studies) and the metabolism
of its associated flora (made of ten times more
individual cells that the total of the cells of the
human body). Briefly, we identify essential processes
(such as biosynthesis of macromolecules, nucleic acids
and proteins in particular) where deep engineering
questions must be asked.

We have thus discovered that the systems that
import/export metabolites in the cell often created
situations that would be literally explosive.
Transporters are so efficient that the cell may be led
to accumulate such high levels of a metabolite that it
would explose under the building up of an unbearable
osmotic pressure. This reasoning allowed us to uncover
the reason why particular enzymes were tagging
metabolites that become accumulated in the cell, and the
export of these modified metabolites by specific
membrane transporters that play the role of safety
valves.

We are confirmed in this (still quite novel) way of
considering biology by the fact that, if this
engineering approach had been used earlier, much
failures in the fight against pathogenic microbes (which
carry processes allowing them to resist antibiotics),
and most of all against cancer (resistance to anticancer
drugs), would have been prevented. This would have
focused tens of thousands of scientists and doctors on
other investigations, infinitely more rewarding than the
goals they tried to reach while they were doomed to
fail.
Our exploration of aging, either naturally or as the
result of chronic treatments that alter metabolism, uses
this original approach. This is how we could identify a
series of functions that are involved in the process of
aging, and to link them to the general metabolism of the
host, his/her microbial flora, and his/her diet.
Furthermore this approach allows us to build up
original collaborations with many laboratories in Europe
and world-wide, in a cutting-edge area that is the
hallmark of the XXIth century.