(663g) Synthetic Ecology for Bioproduction and Biosensing

Microbial communities hold great potential for a range of biotechnological applications where dividing labor between multiple organisms can enable increased productivity, new functions, or simplified process optimization. The ability to treat different organisms, optimized for a specific part of a process, as modules that can easily be swapped and recombined enhances overall flexibility. Key challenges in engineering microbial consortia include, developing tools for reliably controlling community composition, coordinating function at the community-level, and optimally dividing labor between multiple species. We have developed a broad set of regulatory systems that enable coordination amongst bacterial species via cell-cell communication, and developed new strategies to control the growth and coexistence of species through manipulating ecological interactions. We have also demonstrated the feasibility of distributing functions between organisms in bioprocessing and biosensing applications, which highlight the potential of adding and combining capabilities in synthetic ecological systems.