Construction of stable microbial consortia for effective biochemical synthesis
Abstract
Microbial consortia can complete otherwise arduous tasks through the cooperation of multiple microbial species. This concept has been applied to produce commodity chemicals, natural products, and biofuels. However, metabolite incompatibility and growth competition can make the microbial composition unstable, and fluctuating microbial populations reduce the efficiency of chemical production. Thus, controlling the populations and regulating the complex interactions between different strains are challenges in constructing stable microbial consortia. This Review discusses advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to control social interactions within microbial cocultures, including substrate separation, byproduct elimination, crossfeeding, and quorum-sensing circuit design. Additionally, this Review addresses interdisciplinary strategies to improve the stability of microbial consortia and provides design principles for microbial consortia to enhance chemical production.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Top-down engineering is an effective method for ecological modification but has limitations due to its inability to accurately control microbial consortia and their complex metabolism, hindering system optimization.
“Top-down engineering is an effective method for ecological modification and has limitations due to its inability to accurately control microbial consortia and their complex metabolism accurately, hindering system optimization [170].”
From Harnessing bacterial consortia for effective bioremediation: targeted removal of heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and persistent pollutants (2025) · cites this paper as [170]
Cites
Metabolic cooperation and spatiotemporal niche partitioning in a kefir microbial community
Blasche, S., Kim, Y., Mars, R. A. T., Machado, D., Maansson, M., Kafkia, E., Milanese, A., Zeller, G., Teusink, B., Nielsen, J., et al. (2021) · Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41564-020-00816-5 · Cited by 328 · see citing works
Jiang, Y., Wu, R., Zhou, J., He, A., Xu, J., Xin, F., Zhang, W., Ma, J., Jiang, M., & Dong, W. (2019) · Biotechnology for Biofuels · doi:10.1186/s13068-019-1495-7 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Qattan, S. Y. A. (2025) · Environmental Sciences Europe · doi:10.1186/s12302-025-01103-y · Cited by 109 · see citing works
- Authors
- Jiang, Y., Wu, R., Zhang, W., Xin, F., & Jiang, M.
- Affiliations
- Nanjing Tech University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Jiang, Yujia
- Xin, Fengxue
- Venue
- Trends in Biotechnology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2023-11
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1430-1441
- ISSN
- 0167-7799 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4380880160
- Cited by
- 86
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 19
- FWCI
- 2.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Trends in biotechnology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Jiangsu National Synergistic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials
- Taishan Industry Leading Talents
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (22008113, 22078151, 22178169)
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20200683, BK20220052)
- Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Science and Technology Independent Innovation Fund (CX(21)3120)
- National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0902200)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Microbial Fuel Cells and Bioremediation
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Microbial bioremediation and biosurfactants
- Keywords
- microbial consortia, microbial co-culture, growth competition, quorum sensing, synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, microbial interactions, biofuels, commodity chemicals, natural products
- MeSH terms
- Quorum Sensing, Synthetic Biology, Microbial Consortia, Metabolic Engineering
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
