Abstract
While natural microbial communities are composed of a mix of microbes with often unknown functions, the construction of synthetic microbial communities allows for the generation of defined systems with reduced complexity. Used in a top-down approach, synthetic communities serve as model systems to ask questions about the performance and stability of microbial communities. In a second, bottom-up approach, synthetic microbial communities are used to study which conditions are necessary to generate interaction patterns like symbiosis or competition, and how higher order community structure can emerge from these. Besides their obvious value as model systems to understand the structure, function and evolution of microbial communities as complex dynamical systems, synthetic communities can also open up new avenues for biotechnological applications.
Highlights
The challenges of understanding natural communities Recent years have seen a surge in the analysis of microbial communities thanks to the development and costreduction in sequencing technologies
Open systems like wastewater treatment plants are found to be dominated by near random colonisation effects [7,8], while more enclosed systems like the gut of higher animals seem to lead to a more stable community over time after an initial period of community assembly [9]
The known limitations in detecting rare species with sequencing approaches [5,10] create a further challenge in dissecting the relation between species composition and community function and dynamics
Summary
Synthetic microbial communities are abstractions of natural systems that allow the in detail study and analysis of the fundamental building blocks and processes that compose a microbial community. Both the top-down and bottom-up approaches summarised above have yielded important results on simple communities and are paving the way for the assembly of higher order communities. Research into synthetic microbial communities is witnessing a re-incarnation after the first attempts in creating coculture and tri-culture about several decades ago [49,50] We feel that this time they are here to stay as an important part of the toolkit of microbial ecology and biotechnology
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