Sustainable management and valorization of biomass wastes using synthetic microbial consortia

A systematic discussion and comparison of the construction methods of synthetic microbial community

“…Within a mature synthetic microbial community, different strains leverage their specific substrates and nutrients to form a complementary metabolic network, which significantly enhances the overall resource utilization rate of the community. Moreover, the diverse metabolites produced by the synthetic community can effectively catalyze numerous complex biochemical processes, a feat that would be very challenging, if not impossible, for a single bacterial strain [ 6 , 44 , 45 ].…”

“…Early biological studies focused on key functional groups in microbial communities, especially on the isolation and modification of individual microbes to enhance specific functions [ 4 ]. However, current research on environmental microorganisms is gradually shifting from analyzing individuals to examining entire community systems [ 5 , 6 ], viewing microorganisms in the environment as a complex symbiotic network of interacting and co-evolving organisms [ 7 , 8 ]. Given current challenges in disease treatment, environmental management, human health and industrial production, assessing a single function of a single strain of bacteria no longer suffices to meet the needs of individual microorganisms.…”

“…Given current challenges in disease treatment, environmental management, human health and industrial production, assessing a single function of a single strain of bacteria no longer suffices to meet the needs of individual microorganisms. Many complex physiological and biochemical processes cannot be effectively addressed or activated because individual microorganisms are poorly adapted to environmental disturbances [ 6 ].…”

“…Mature synthetic microbial communities have several advantages, such as low complexity, high controllability and good stability, balancing the complexity, relevance and ease of individual microorganisms with the complexity of natural microbial communities [ 16 , 17 ]. In synthetic microbial community, the division of labor among community members also effectively reduces the load of exogenous vectors and the metabolic burden on individual organisms while concurrently mitigating environmental stress, thereby improving their robustness [ 5 , 6 , 18 ]. Thanks to these properties, synthetic microbial community has a high potential in human health, industrial production, pollutant degradation, and food fermentation.…”

Top-down and bottom-up microbiome engineering approaches to enable biomanufacturing from waste biomass

“…Previous reviews on microbial consortia have focused on either the top-down or bottom-up microbiome engineering approaches for environmental, public health, medical, or biotechnology applications (Duncker et al., 2021 ; Hu et al., 2022 ; Sauer & Marx, 2023 ; Zhou et al., 2024 ). However, there is a lack of comprehensive reviews that provide critical perspectives on both top-down and bottom-up approaches, and their integration to enable biomanufacturing from waste streams.…”