Background

In order to improve globally equality, both monetary and medically, the accessibility of new technologies is imperative. Our project designed a intercellular communication and control system that could be used to stabilise the composition of mixed populations of bacteria. This would simplify the use of complicated biological systems such as microbial consortia.

Microbial consortia are populations of bacteria or other microorganisms that work together. They exist naturally and have been proven to be more robust and adaptable than monocultures^{1, 2}. Why then do large scale biotech industries often use monocultures? The production of quorn³ and antibiotics⁴ are often done with only one species or strain of organism.

This is to prevent the effects of competition between strains. In environments where production of product can be detrimental to the organism’s health, adding in competition is adding another problem to the difficult task of optimizing production.

Current uses of microbial consortia are subject to problems. These include: interspecies competition; sensitivity to changes in feedstock; and long reestablishment times following reactor replacement. We attempt to solve these problems by introducing novel intercellular communication, greater responsiveness, and population control methods to our microbial system. These enable us to better regulate the composition of artificial microbial communities, while also allowing for more rapid feedback on its status, so that problems can be identified before the community collapses.

If microbial consortia can be designed more easily, the possibility of using multiple strains of bacteria to produce complex biomaterials or degrade recalcitrant materials becomes ever more likely.^{5, 6}

References

1. Wintermute, E. H., & Silver, P. A. (2010). Dynamics in the mixed microbial concourse. Genes & Development, 24(23), 2603-2614. doi: 10.1101/gad.1985210
2. Sørensen, S. R., Ronen, Z., & Aamand, J. (2002). Growth in Coculture Stimulates Metabolism of the Phenylurea Herbicide Isoproturon by Sphingomonas sp. Strain SRS2. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 68(7), 3478-3485. doi: 10.1128/aem.68.7.3478-3485.2002
3. WIEBE, M. G., NOVÁKOVA, M., MILLER, L., BLAKEBROUGH, M. L., ROBSON, G. D., PUNT, P. J., & TRINCI, A. P. J. (1997). Protoplast production and transformation of morphological mutants of the Quorn® myco-protein fungus, Fusarium graminearum A3/5, using the hygromycin B resistance plasmid pAN7-1. Mycological Research, 101(07), 871-877. doi: doi:10.1017/S0953756296003425.
4. Hendlin, D., Stapley, E. O., Jackson, M., Wallick, H., Miller, A. K., Wolf, F. J., . . . Mochales, S. (1969). Phosphonomycin, a New Antibiotic Produced by Strains of Streptomyces. Science, 166(3901), 122-123. doi: 10.1126/science.166.3901.122
5. Brenner, K., You, L., & Arnold, F. H. (2008). Engineering microbial consortia: a new frontier in synthetic biology. Trends in Biotechnology, 26(9), 483-489. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2008.05.004
6. Rittmann, B. E., et al. (2006). A vista for microbial ecology and environmental biotechnology. Environmental science & technology, 40(4), 1096-1103.