The design of controllable artificial microbial consortia has attracted considerable interest in recent years to capitalize on the inherent advantages in comparison to monocultures such as the distribution of the metabolic burden by division of labor, the modularity and the ability to convert complex substrates. One promising approach to control the consortia composition, function and stability is the provision of defined ecological niches fitted to the specific needs of the consortium members. In this review, we discuss recent examples for the creation of metabolic niches by biological engineering of resource partitioning and syntrophic interactions. Moreover, we introduce a complementing process engineering approach to provide defined spatial niches with differing abiotic conditions (e.g. O2, T, light) in stirred tank reactors harboring biofilms. This enables the co-cultivation of microorganisms with non-overlapping abiotic requirements and the control of the strain ratio in consortia characterized by substrate competition.

中文翻译：

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生态位工程，以创建稳定的人工财团用于复杂的生物转化。

可控的人工微生物联合体的设计近年来吸引了相当大的兴趣，以利用与单培养相比的固有优势，例如通过分工来分配代谢负担，模块化以及转化复杂底物的能力。控制联盟的组成，功能和稳定性的一种有前途的方法是提供满足联盟成员特定需求的明确生态位。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了通过资源分配和营养相互作用的生物工程创造代谢壁ni的最新例子。此外，我们引入了一种补充工艺工程方法，以在装有生物膜的搅拌釜反应器中提供具有不同非生物条件（例如O2，T，光照）的定义空间生态位。