Modularized Design and Construction of Tunable Microbial Consortia with Flexible Topologies

Xingwen Chen, Changhan He, Qi Zhang, Samat Bayakmetov, Xiao Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Complex and fluid bacterial community compositions are critical to diversity, stability, and function. However, quantitative and mechanistic descriptions of the dynamics of such compositions are still lacking. Here, we develop a modularized design framework that allows for bottom-up construction and the study of synthetic bacterial consortia with different topologies. We showcase the microbial consortia design and building process by constructing amensalism and competition consortia using only genetic circuit modules to engineer different strains to form the community. Functions of modules and hosting strains are validated and quantified to calibrate dynamic parameters, which are then directly fed into a full mechanistic model to accurately predict consortia composition dynamics for both amensalism and competition without further fitting. More importantly, such quantitative understanding successfully identifies the experimental conditions to achieve coexistence composition dynamics. These results illustrate the process of both computationally and experimentally building up bacteria consortia complexity and hence achieve robust control of such fluid systems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)183-194
Number of pages12
JournalACS Synthetic Biology
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 19 2024
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • amensalism
  • bacterial growth
  • competition
  • microbial consortia
  • microbial ecology

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous)

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