Genetically engineered microbes promise to improve human health and help solve global climate crises. However, the widespread adoption of these microbes is often hindered by genetic instability caused by mutations and by the unpredictable spread of synthetic genes in the environment. We present a simple but effective method for creating synthetic overlapping genes to stabilize genes against mutations and prevent their spread in the environment. This method is broadly useful for constructing stable genetically engineered microbes and studying how they evolve in the environment.
Leonard et al. (Fri,) studied this question.