Design of mutualistic microbial consortia for stable conversion of carbon monoxide to value-added chemicals

Engineered microbial consortia: strategies and applications

“…Synthetic microbial communities have been engineered to provide quantitative insights into the persistence and function of mutualistic systems [ 40 – 43 ]. Moreover, mutualistic interactions have been utilized to improve biofilm formation and metabolic production [ 24 , 44 , 45 ]. For example, a synthetic microbial consortium consisting of an E. coli strain engineered to help a second engineered E. coli strain form a biofilm was mutualistic due to the reliance of both strains on biofilm formation for optimal growth or survival [ 45 ].…”

“…Synthetic consortia have been designed with mutualism to improve metabolic engineering for producing valuable metabolites [ 24 , 44 ]. Zhou et al .…”

“…Similarly, Cha et al designed a mutualistic co-culture to improve metabolic conversion of carbon monoxide (CO). In particular, Eubacterium limosum naturally consumes CO as a carbon source and converts it to acetate, which negatively affects cells when it accumulates [ 44 ]. E. coli cells were engineered to convert acetate in the mixed culture into a useful biochemical, either itaconic acid or 3-hydroxypropionic acid [ 44 ] (Fig.…”

“…2 C). They demonstrated more efficient CO consumption and biochemical production in the engineered mutualistic consortia than in E. limosum monoculture [ 44 ]. This mutualistic design represents a platform where adding a mutualistic engineered strain can improve and exploit natural metabolic processes, like CO consumption, carried out by microbes that are difficult to engineer genetically.…”

“…Research in metabolic engineering has primarily involved optimizing single strains [ 9 , 10 ]. There is growing research to develop microbial consortia for metabolic engineering to divide genetic circuits for the pathways between strains [ 24 , 44 , 58 – 61 ]. More steps of a metabolic pathway require more enzymes to be expressed, which can increase the burden on cells in a monoculture [ 17 ].…”