Interspecies Metabolic Interactions in a Synergistic Consortium Drive Efficient Degradation of the Herbicide Bromoxynil Octanoate

Abstract

Microbial communities play vital roles in biogeochemical cycles, allowing biodegradation of a wide range of pollutants. Although many studies have shown the importance of interspecies interactions on activities of communities, fully elucidating the complex interactions in microbial communities is still challenging. Here, we isolated a consortium containing two bacterial strains (Acinetobacter sp. AG3 and Bacillus sp. R45), which could mineralize bromoxynil octanoate (BO) with higher efficiency than either strain individually. The BO degradation pathway by the synergistic consortium was elucidated, and interspecies interactions in the consortium were explored using genome-scale metabolic models (GSMMs). Modeling showed that growth and degradation enhancements were driven by metabolic interactions, such as syntrophic exchanges of small metabolites in the consortium. Besides, nutritional enhancers were predicted to improve BO degradation, which were tested experimentally. Overall, our results will enhance our understanding of microbial mineralization of BO by consortia and promote the application of microbial communities for bioremediation.

Establishment of microbial model communities capable of removing trace organic chemicals for biotransformation mechanisms research

“…Moreover, synergistic metabolic interactions between species help to stabilize the communities despite fluctuating environmental conditions or even enhance their functions, and these interactions become stronger when the species are distantly related [ 26 ]. For example, the interspecies interactions between Acinetobacter strain and Bacillus strain in a synergistic consortium resulted in higher degradation efficiency of herbicide bromoxynil octanoate than either strain individually [ 27 ].…”

A metabolic modeling-based framework for predicting trophic dependencies in native rhizobiomes of crop plants

“…Advancement of sequencing technologies alongside the development of automatic pipelines for GSMM construction 31,32 has promoted an increased use of CBM for the modeling of communities with growing complexity [22][23][24]26,33,34 . The relevance of CBM to the study of microbiomes has been demonstrated in a variety of ecosystems and recent works have shown that CBM-based predictions can guide the development of strategies for microbiome management [34][35][36][37] . An accurate representation of microbial metabolic networks depends on the origin of the genomes analyzed.…”