Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are severe public health problem and caused by mono- or poly-bacteria. Culture-based methods are routinely used for the diagnosis of UTIs in clinical practice, but those...

A lack of rapid and dependable microbial identification platforms, as well as insufficient or overdue microbiological surveillance and corresponding resolutions implemented in clinical diagnosis and treatment, agricultural production, and the food industry, can seriously harm human health and reduce productivity in the food industry. Here, a two-dimensional Ni–Co bimetallic metal–organic framework nanozyme (2D-NCM) is prepared for the rapid and efficient discrimination of microbes including clinical pathogens and brewing fungi. The nanozyme 2D-NCM, which is synthesized via a facile layered double hydroxide in situ transformation strategy, exhibits enhanced peroxidase-like activity. The biocatalytic activity of 2D-NCM could be altered to different degrees via different interactions between 2D-NCM and microbes. By selection of diverse compositions of absorbance at different time points, the sensing unit, 2D-NCM, could provide multichannel information for microbial identification. The nanozyme-based platform prevents the tedious synthesis of multiple biosensing receptors and the demand for complicated operation/precise devices, resulting in lower cost, quicker response (within 0.5 h), higher throughput, and simpler handling without washing procedures. This study provides an alternative strategy to construct practicable, facile, and flexible MOF nanozyme based biosensing arrays for the identification of microbes, making an active contribution toward precision medicine, food safety, and environmental protection.

Non-gene-editing microbiome engineering (NgeME) is the rational design and control of natural microbial consortia to perform desired functions. Traditional NgeME approaches use selected environmental variables to force natural microbial consortia to perform the desired functions. Spontaneous food fermentation, the oldest kind of traditional NgeME, transforms foods into various fermented products using natural microbial networks. In traditional NgeME, spontaneous food fermentation microbiotas (SFFMs) are typically formed and controlled manually by the establishment of limiting factors in small batches with little mechanization. However, limitation control generally leads to trade-offs between efficiency and the quality of fermentation. Modern NgeME approaches based on synthetic microbial ecology have been developed using designed microbial communities to explore assembly mechanisms and target functional enhancement of SFFMs. This has greatly improved our understanding of microbiota control, but such approaches still have shortcomings compared to traditional NgeME. Here, we comprehensively describe research on mechanisms and control strategies for SFFMs based on traditional and modern NgeME. We discuss the ecological and engineering principles of the two approaches to enhance the understanding of how best to control SFFM. We also review recent applied and theoretical research on modern NgeME and propose an integrated in vitro synthetic microbiota model to bridge gaps between limitation control and design control for SFFM.

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