The extensive use of phthalic acid esters (PAEs) has led to their widespread distribution across various environments. As PAEs pose significant threats to human health, it is urgent to develop efficient strategies to eliminate them from environments. Bacteria-driven PAE biodegradation has been considered as an inexpensive yet effective strategy to restore the contaminated environments. Despite great advances in bacterial culturing and sequencing, the inherent complexity of indigenous microbial community hinders us to mechanistically understand in situ PAE biodegradation and efficiently harness the degrading power of bacteria. The synthetic microbial ecology provides us a simple and controllable model system to address this problem. In this review, we focus on the current progress of PAE biodegradation mediated by bacterial isolates and indigenous bacterial communities, and discuss the prospective of synthetic PAE-degrading bacterial communities in PAE biodegradation research. It is anticipated that the theories and approaches of synthetic microbial ecology will revolutionize the study of bacteria-driven PAE biodegradation and provide novel insights for developing effective bioremediation solutions.

邻苯二甲酸酯（PAE）的广泛使用已导致它们在各种环境中的广泛分布。由于PAE对人类健康构成重大威胁，因此迫切需要制定有效的策略以将其从环境中消除。细菌驱动的PAE生物降解被认为是恢复污染环境的一种廉价而有效的策略。尽管细菌培养和测序技术取得了长足的进步，但土著微生物群落固有的复杂性阻碍了我们对原位进行机械理解。PAE可生物降解并有效利用细菌的降解能力。合成微生物生态学为我们提供了一个简单且可控的模型系统来解决此问题。在这篇综述中，我们关注由细菌分离株和本地细菌群落介导的PAE生物降解的最新进展，并讨论在PAE生物降解研究中合成的PAE降解细菌群落的前景。预计合成微生物生态学的理论和方法将彻底改变细菌驱动的PAE生物降解的研究，并为开发有效的生物修复解决方案提供新颖的见解。