Construction of stable microbial consortia for effective biochemical synthesis

Microbial consortia are emerging as potential platforms for biochemicals production with complex metabolic pathways. Elimination of the carbon competition has been adopted to avoid the competition interaction within microbial cocultures. Elimination of inhibitors from metabolic byproducts can promote the cooperation between members. Crossfeeding and quorum-sensing circuit design can improve the stability and controllability of microbial population. Spatial segregation can easily alter the microbial composition and create individual ecological niches in microbial consortia. Microbial consortia can complete otherwise arduous tasks through the cooperation of multiple microbial species. This concept has been applied to produce commodity chemicals, natural products, and biofuels. However, metabolite incompatibility and growth competition can make the microbial composition unstable, and fluctuating microbial populations reduce the efficiency of chemical production. Thus, controlling the populations and regulating the complex interactions between different strains are challenges in constructing stable microbial consortia. This Review discusses advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to control social interactions within microbial cocultures, including substrate separation, byproduct elimination, crossfeeding, and quorum-sensing circuit design. Additionally, this Review addresses interdisciplinary strategies to improve the stability of microbial consortia and provides design principles for microbial consortia to enhance chemical production. Microbial consortia can complete otherwise arduous tasks through the cooperation of multiple microbial species. This concept has been applied to produce commodity chemicals, natural products, and biofuels. However, metabolite incompatibility and growth competition can make the microbial composition unstable, and fluctuating microbial populations reduce the efficiency of chemical production. Thus, controlling the populations and regulating the complex interactions between different strains are challenges in constructing stable microbial consortia. This Review discusses advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to control social interactions within microbial cocultures, including substrate separation, byproduct elimination, crossfeeding, and quorum-sensing circuit design. Additionally, this Review addresses interdisciplinary strategies to improve the stability of microbial consortia and provides design principles for microbial consortia to enhance chemical production. an organism able to synthesize a particular organic compound required for its growth. Auxotrophic organisms can grow if this missing metabolite or compound is supplemented in its growth media, or if another member in the consortia produces the compound and shares the resource. the proportion value of each microorganism inoculated in the coculture system. the shunt node in the metabolic network. In this Review, metabolic node represents a key intermediate metabolite in the microbial consortia. Generally, a complicated metabolic pathway can be divided into different chassis cells according to the metabolic node. two or more microbial groups living symbiotically. a system of stimulus and response correlated to population density.