Bottom-Up Approaches to Synthetic Cooperation in Microbial Communities
Name
life-09-00022.pdf
Size
35.46 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
72c7df81139e7162f0dc2ad73a483df1
Author(s)
Rodríguez Amor, Daniel
Dal Bello, Martina
Date Issued
February 2019
Journal
Life
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Rodríguez Amor, Daniel, and Martina Dal Bello. “Bottom-Up Approaches to Synthetic Cooperation in Microbial Communities.” Life, 9, 1 (February 2019): 22.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Microbial cooperation pervades ecological scales, from single-species populations to host-associated microbiomes. Understanding the mechanisms promoting the stability of cooperation against potential threats by cheaters is a major question that only recently has been approached experimentally. Synthetic biology has helped to uncover some of these basic mechanisms, which were to some extent anticipated by theoretical predictions. Moreover, synthetic cooperation is a promising lead towards the engineering of novel functions and enhanced productivity of microbial communities. Here, we review recent progress on engineered cooperation in microbial ecosystems. We focus on bottom-up approaches that help to better understand cooperation at the population level, progressively addressing the challenges of tackling higher degrees of complexity: spatial structure, multispecies communities, and host-associated microbiomes. We envisage cooperation as a key ingredient in engineering complex microbial ecosystems. Keywords: synthetic microbial communities; mutualism; cheaters; host-microbiome interactions;
synthetic ecology
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/life9010022
