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Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology

The metabolic capabilities of microbes are the basis for many major biotechnological advances, exploiting microbial diversity by selection or engineering of single strains. However, there are limits to the advances that can be achieved with single strains, and attention has turned toward the metabol...

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Autores principales: Escalante, Ana E., Rebolleda-Gómez, María, Benítez, Mariana, Travisano, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341553/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25767468
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00143
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author Escalante, Ana E.
Rebolleda-Gómez, María
Benítez, Mariana
Travisano, Michael
author_facet Escalante, Ana E.
Rebolleda-Gómez, María
Benítez, Mariana
Travisano, Michael
author_sort Escalante, Ana E.
collection PubMed
description The metabolic capabilities of microbes are the basis for many major biotechnological advances, exploiting microbial diversity by selection or engineering of single strains. However, there are limits to the advances that can be achieved with single strains, and attention has turned toward the metabolic potential of consortia and the field of synthetic ecology. The main challenge for the synthetic ecology is that consortia are frequently unstable, largely because evolution by constituent members affects their interactions, which are the basis of collective metabolic functionality. Current practices in modeling consortia largely consider interactions as fixed circuits of chemical reactions, which greatly increases their tractability. This simplification comes at the cost of essential biological realism, stripping out the ecological context in which the metabolic actions occur and the potential for evolutionary change. In other words, evolutionary stability is not engineered into the system. This realization highlights the necessity to better identify the key components that influence the stable coexistence of microorganisms. Inclusion of ecological and evolutionary principles, in addition to biophysical variables and stoichiometric modeling of metabolism, is critical for microbial consortia design. This review aims to bring ecological and evolutionary concepts to the discussion on the stability of microbial consortia. In particular, we focus on the combined effect of spatial structure (connectivity of molecules and cells within the system) and ecological interactions (reciprocal and non-reciprocal) on the persistence of microbial consortia. We discuss exemplary cases to illustrate these ideas from published studies in evolutionary biology and biotechnology. We conclude by making clear the relevance of incorporating evolutionary and ecological principles to the design of microbial consortia, as a way of achieving evolutionarily stable and sustainable systems.
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spelling pubmed-43415532015-03-12 Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology Escalante, Ana E. Rebolleda-Gómez, María Benítez, Mariana Travisano, Michael Front Microbiol Microbiology The metabolic capabilities of microbes are the basis for many major biotechnological advances, exploiting microbial diversity by selection or engineering of single strains. However, there are limits to the advances that can be achieved with single strains, and attention has turned toward the metabolic potential of consortia and the field of synthetic ecology. The main challenge for the synthetic ecology is that consortia are frequently unstable, largely because evolution by constituent members affects their interactions, which are the basis of collective metabolic functionality. Current practices in modeling consortia largely consider interactions as fixed circuits of chemical reactions, which greatly increases their tractability. This simplification comes at the cost of essential biological realism, stripping out the ecological context in which the metabolic actions occur and the potential for evolutionary change. In other words, evolutionary stability is not engineered into the system. This realization highlights the necessity to better identify the key components that influence the stable coexistence of microorganisms. Inclusion of ecological and evolutionary principles, in addition to biophysical variables and stoichiometric modeling of metabolism, is critical for microbial consortia design. This review aims to bring ecological and evolutionary concepts to the discussion on the stability of microbial consortia. In particular, we focus on the combined effect of spatial structure (connectivity of molecules and cells within the system) and ecological interactions (reciprocal and non-reciprocal) on the persistence of microbial consortia. We discuss exemplary cases to illustrate these ideas from published studies in evolutionary biology and biotechnology. We conclude by making clear the relevance of incorporating evolutionary and ecological principles to the design of microbial consortia, as a way of achieving evolutionarily stable and sustainable systems. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4341553/ /pubmed/25767468 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00143 Text en Copyright © 2015 Escalante, Rebolleda-Gómez, Benítez and Travisano. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Escalante, Ana E.
Rebolleda-Gómez, María
Benítez, Mariana
Travisano, Michael
Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title_full Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title_fullStr Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title_full_unstemmed Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title_short Ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
title_sort ecological perspectives on synthetic biology: insights from microbial population biology
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341553/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25767468
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00143
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