Engineered Microbial Consortia

In their natural habitat, microbial cells live in organised consortia reaching a steady state in terms of population dynamics, allowing them to work together to consume several carbon sources while sharing of complex metabolic activities.

At LeoRiosLab, we are convinced that the production of several complex chemicals would be more efficient using engineered microbial consortia than monocultures. Advantages of using microbial consortia include improving functionality via specialization, reducing metabolic burden of organisms and increasing modularity of the system which makes easier the engineering and manipulation. The use of continuous processing offers a great opportunity to work with consortia, as these systems operate at steady state which could be used to define and control the population. Furthermore, the use of a microbial consortium may be useful to move from conventional carbon sources to non-conventional carbon sources such as waste products.