Single strain control of microbial consortia

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22240-x
• Publication Date: 2021-03-30T10:03:17Z
• Authors: Alex J. H. Fedorec; Behzad D. Karkaria; Michael Sulu; Chris P. Barnes
• Keywords: Competitive exclusion; Strain (injury); Leverage (statistics)

Abstract The scope of bioengineering is expanding from the creation single strains to design microbial communities, allowing for division-of-labour, specialised sub-populations and interaction with “wild” microbiomes. However, in absence stabilising interactions, competition between microbes inevitably leads removal less fit community members over time. Here, we leverage amensalism competitive exclusion stabilise a two-strain by engineering strain Escherichia coli which secretes toxin response competition. We show experimentally mathematically that such system can produce stable populations composition tunable easily controllable parameters. This creates tunable, consortia while only requiring strain.