Dissecting the Division of Labor in Microbial Consortia for the Production of Biofuels and Chemicals (Final Technical Report)

Technical Report · Tue Dec 12 04:00:00 EST 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1902819· OSTI ID:1902819

Lu, Ting ^[1]; Jin, Yong-Su ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)

The overarching objective of this project is to elucidate the fundamental design rules for microbial division of labor (DOL), the core of ecosystem organization, in the context of artificial yeast—lactic acid bacteria consortia that produce advanced biofuel and chemical from cellulosic biomass. Over the course of four years, we have successfully achieved the objective through three lines of research that combines experiment with mathematical modeling. Specifically, we have shown that compositional and temporal DOL is effective in modulating mixed sugar fermentation by an engineered consortium and uncovered general quantitative criteria for conditions under which microbial DOL outperforms single superbugs for simultaneous utilization of mixed substrates. We also demonstrated, in synthetic consortia of yeast and lactic acid bacteria, that partitioning the labor for substrate breakdown and end-product synthesis can allow an efficient production of 2-butanol that is difficult otherwise for a single yeast strain. Additionally, by systematically probing the stability of an engineered cooperative consortium, we found that the stability of microbial symbiosis is governed by the topological structure of the underlying cellular interactions rather than specific microbial species and that rational modulation of the interactions may facilitate the restoration of collapsed consortia as well as the intervention of target communities. Together, this project has advanced the fundamental knowledge of microbial DOL in terms of its strength in mixed substrate fermentation, production of complex chemicals, and ecological system stability in the context of microbial consortia. It also provides valuable insights into the design, construction and optimization of artificial consortia for the utilization of cellulosic biomass and economic production of biofuel and chemicals.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• DOE Contract Number: SC0019185
• OSTI ID: 1902819
• Report Number(s): DOE-UIUC--0019185
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES