Abstract
AbstractMicroorganisms are highly efficient biocatalysts. Yet making use of their capabilities for chemical transformations requiring synergistic interactions between different microbes is challenging as the competition for resources might reduce the diversity and ultimately disrupt the synergies. Here, a new method is proposed for constructing microbial consortia for the integration of multistep transformations. Bacteria are successively grown and trapped within semipermeable inorganic foams produced as millimeter‐sized beads. The beads function as efficient living biocatalysts is demonstrated. These living heterogeneous biocatalysts are manipulated to perform cycles of biochemical reactions and furthermore assembled to perform preprogrammed sequences of reactions. This new family of living advanced biocatalysts should find applications in a wide range of basic research and industrial systems where complex tasks have to be performed by controlled consortia of microorganisms.
Highlights
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not
A new method is proposed for constructing microbial consortia for the integration of transformation
Bacteria are successively grown and trapped within semipermeable inorganic foams produced as millimeter-sized beads
Summary
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. These transformations in confinement.[21,22,23] Here, we use a sol–gel process to confine maintain living cells in their out-of-equilibrium status[1] and bacteria while maintaining viability, proliferation and metalead to products with added value.[2,3,4] Exploiting these capaci- bolic activity.[24,25,26,27] In contrast to a recently reported approach ties of microorganisms for chemical transformations is an in which a single matrix was used to integrate cascades,[28] we efficient concept that has been used for decades already in show a modular assembly concept associating beads functionpractical and industrial systems.
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