The "hidden resource of microbes" is key to synthetic biology technology, University of Newcastle Professor Brett Neilan says.
Plankton and blue-green algae, for example, are types of bacteria that cause "a lot of problems in the freshwater inland rivers of Australia".
This can cause problems for water supplies. "But they actually create most of the oxygen on the planet from the oceans," he said.
They have diverse capabilities.
"They've adapted over billions of years to live all over the world. They live in contaminated soils, oceans, hot springs, even Antarctica," he said.
They've adapted different ways to do this and "different ways of fighting with each other".
"We can exploit this chemical warfare in terms of discovering new antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs," he said.
When designing a drug, you "usually take what nature has given you".
A classic example is an anti-cancer drug produced by a yeast that lives in a tree.
"We used to knock down all the trees and then we had no more anti-cancer drugs," he said.
"You can take the genes out of that tree and grow them in fermenters, just like beer."
People in Newcastle who make beer could use their skills to manufacture new drugs or bio-fertilisers for farms.
The technology can also be used to make so-called "functional foods".
"You can change the make-up of food and personalise people's nutrition," he said.
"You can mix and match these microbes to rapidly give you a diet high in certain nutrients.
"Some people might have an iron deficiency for example. You can have more iron available to your body by changing this microbial recipe that you put together for people."
Another example is "engineered gut microbiota, controlled by thought" to release medication on time and in the correct amounts, the Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology says.
This could even be integrated with wearables and smartphones to enable "more sensitive calibration of medication delivery in a far broader range of patients".
