Traditional biotechnological applications of microorganisms employ mono-cultivation or co-cultivation in well-mixed vessels disregarding the potential of spatially organized cultures. Metabolic specialization and guided species interactions facilitated through spatial isolation would enable consortia of microbes to accomplish more complex functions than currently possible, for bioproduction as well as biodegradation processes. Here, we review concepts of spatially linked microbial consortia in which spatial arrangement is optimized to increase control and facilitate new species combinations. We highlight that genome-scale metabolic network models can inform the design and tuning of synthetic microbial consortia and suggest that a standardized assembly of such systems allows the combination of 'incompatibles', potentially leading to countless novel applications.

中文翻译：

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空间相连的微生物群落的工程——潜力和前景。


微生物的传统生物技术应用采用在充分混合的容器中单独培养或共同培养，忽略了空间组织培养的潜力。通过空间隔离促进的代谢专门化和引导物种相互作用将使微生物群落能够完成比目前更复杂的功能，用于生物生产和生物降解过程。在这里，我们回顾了空间相连的微生物群落的概念，其中空间排列被优化以增强控制并促进新物种组合。我们强调，基因组规模的代谢网络模型可以为合成微生物群落的设计和调整提供信息，并建议此类系统的标准化组装允许“不相容”的组合，可能会带来无数的新颖应用。