Production of Cambodian rice wine involves complex microbial consortia. Indeed, previous studies focused on traditional microbial starters used for this product revealed that three microbial strains with complementary metabolic activities are required for an effective fermentation, i.e., filamentous fungi (Rhizopus oryzae), yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), and lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus plantarum). Modulating the ratio between these three key players led to significant differences, not only in terms of ethanol and organic acid production, but also on the profile of volatile compounds, in comparison with natural communities. However, we observed that using an equal ratio of spores/cells of the three microbial strains during inoculation led to flavor profile and ethanol yield close to that obtained through the use of natural communities. Compartmentalization of metabolic tasks through the use of a biofilm cultivation device allows further improvement of the whole fermentation process, notably by increasing the amount of key components of the aroma profile of the fermented beverage (i.e., mainly phenylethyl alcohol, isobutyl alcohol, isoamyl alcohol, and 2-methyl-butanol) and reducing the amount of off-flavor compounds. This study is a step forward in our understanding of interkingdom microbial interactions with strong application potential in food biotechnology.
Microbial populations can adapt to adverse environmental conditions either by appropriately sensing and responding to the changes in their surroundings or by stochastically switching to an alternative phenotypic state. Recent data point out that these two strategies can be exhibited by the same cellular system, depending on the amplitude/frequency of the environmental perturbations and on the architecture of the genetic circuits involved in the adaptation process. Accordingly, several mitigation strategies have been designed for the effective control of microbial populations in different contexts, ranging from biomedicine to bioprocess engineering. Technically, such control strategies have been made possible by the advances made at the level of computational and synthetic biology combined with control theory. However, these control strategies have been applied mostly to synthetic gene circuits, impairing the applicability of the approach to natural circuits. In this review, we argue that it is possible to expand these control strategies to any cellular system and gene circuits based on a metric derived from this information theory, i.e., mutual information (MI). Indeed, based on this metric, it should be possible to characterize the natural frequency of any gene circuits and use it for controlling gene circuits within a population of cells.
used traditional microbial starters revealed that effective fermentation requires three microbial strains with complementary metabolic activities: filamentous fungi (Rhizopus oryzae), yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), and lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus plantarum). Relative to natural communities, modulation of the ratio of these three microorganisms led to significant differences not only in terms of ethanol and organic acid production, but also with the profile of volatile compounds. However, inoculation of an equal ratio of spores/cells of the three aforementioned microbial strains led to a flavor profile and ethanol yield similar to that obtained with natural communities. Compartmentalization of metabolic tasks through the use of a biofilm cultivation device allowed further improvement of the entire fermentation process, notably by increasing the amount of key components of the aroma profile of the fermented beverage (i.e., mainly phenylethyl alcohol, isobutyl alcohol, isoamyl alcohol, and 2-methyl-butanol) and reducing the amount of off-flavor compound. This study represents an initial step toward understanding interkingdom microbial interactions with a strong potential for application in the food biotechnology.
Biofilm is ubiquitous in industrial water systems, causing biofouling and leading to heat transfer efficiency decreases. In particular, multi-species living in biofilms could boost biomass production and enhance treatment resistance. In this study, a total of 37 bacterial strains were isolated from a cooling tower biofilm where acetic acid and propionic acid were detected as the main carbon sources. These isolates mainly belonged to Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, which occupied more than 80% of the total strains according to the 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Four species (Acinetobacter sp. CTS3, Corynebacterium sp. CTS5, Providencia sp. CTS12, and Pseudomonas sp. CTS17) were observed co-existing in the synthetic medium. Quantitative comparison of biofilm biomass from mono- and multi-species showed a synergistic effect towards biofilm formation among these four species. Three metabolic inhibitors (sulfathiazole, 3-bromopyruvic acid, and 3-nitropropionic acid) were employed to prevent biofilm formation based on their inhibitory effect on corresponding metabolic pathways. All of them displayed evident inhibition profiles to biofilm formation. Notably, combining these three inhibitors possessed a remarkable ability to block the multi-species biofilm development with lower concentrations, suggesting an enhanced effect appeared in simultaneous use. This study demonstrates that combined utilization of metabolic inhibitors is an alternative strategy to prevent multi-species biofilm formation.
Biofilm is ubiquitous in natural environments, causing biofouling in industrial water systems and leading to liquidity and heat transfer efficiency decreases. In particular, multi-species coexistence in biofilms can provide the synergy needed to boost biomass production and enhance treatment resistance. In this study, a total of 37 bacterial strains were isolated from a cooling tower where acetic acid and propionic acid were used as the primary carbon sources. These isolates mainly belonged to Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, which occupied more than 80% of the total strains according to the 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Four species (Acinetobacter sp. CTS3, Corynebacterium sp. CTS5, Providencia sp. CTS12, and Pseudomonas sp. CTS17) were observed to co-exist in the synthetic medium, showing a synergistic effect towards biofilm formation. Three metabolic inhibitors (sulfathiazole, 3-Bromopyruvic acid, and 3-Nitropropionic acid) were employed as possible treatments against biofilm formation due to their inhibition effect on c-di-GMP biosynthesis or assimilation of volatile fatty acids. All of them displayed evident inhibition profiles to biofilm formation. Notably, the combination of these three inhibitors possessed a remarkable ability to block the development of a multi-species biofilm with lower concentrations, suggesting an enhanced effect with their simultaneous use. This study demonstrates that targeting cellular metabolism is an effective way to inhibit biofilm formation derived from multi-species.
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