The "ick factor" - which is pretty much reduced to a minimum if the donor stool is processed appropriately anyway - may not be long for the world. There has bee

The "ick factor" - which is pretty much reduced to a minimum if the donor stool is processed appropriately anyway - may not be long for the world. There has been at least one small scale study using synthetically derived donor samples - essentially taking someone's stool, figuring out what the hell is in it, and culturing accordingly. That may also solve one of the big burdens behind using fecal transplant as a common technique - while the procedure itself isn't too expensive (though its not trivial, getting microbes past your stomach acid in quantity is no small thing), testing donor stool is, because of the amount of things we could accidentally give you. Synthetic donor culture would have less of a problem with that.