title: Better together: engineering and application of microbial symbioses.
abstract: Symbioses provide a way to surpass the limitations of individual microbes. Natural communities exemplify this in symbioses like lichens and biofilms that are robust to perturbations, an essential feature in fluctuating environments. Metabolic capabilities also expand in consortia enabling the division of labor across organisms as seen in photosynthetic and methanogenic communities. In engineered consortia, the external environment provides levers of control for microbes repurposed from nature or engineered to interact through synthetic biology. Consortia have successfully been applied to real-world problems including remediation and energy, however there are still fundamental questions to be answered. It is clear that continued study is necessary for the understanding and engineering of microbial systems that are more than the sum of their parts.
authors: Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, WAB 563, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors: Stephanie G
authors: SG
authors: Hays
authors: MIT Media Lab, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 75 Amherst St.,Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors: William G
authors: WG
authors: Patrick
authors: Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, WAB 563, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors: Marika
authors: M
authors: Ziesack
authors: MIT Media Lab, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 75 Amherst St.,Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors: Neri
authors: N
authors: Oxman
authors: Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, WAB 563, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: pamela_silver@hms.harvard.edu.
authors: Pamela A
authors: PA
authors: Silver
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057005:Bioengineering / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D059013:Microbial Consortia; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques; D013559:Symbiosis; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods