Synthetic microbial consortia with programmable ecological interactions

1. Central to the composition, structure and function of any microbial community is complex species interaction web. But understanding overwhelming complexity ecological webs has been challenging, owing at least partly lack efficient tools for disentangling interactions in natural or artificial communities. 2. In this study, we developed a experimental system which allows rapidly generating consortia with programmable interactions. We engineered model organism Escherichia coli construct metabolism- quorum sensing-based modules. The two modules were used create synthetic synergy, competition exploitation. 3. showed that each displayed unique mode population dynamics under certain initial inoculation conditions. also demonstrated transitions between exploitation types synergy based on same paired strains plausible by tuning lastly derived mathematical models quantitatively capture experimentally observed these consortia. 4. This approach offers fresh angle engineering systems testing questions much greater control manipulation.