Engineering Synthetic Biofilm-Forming Microbial Consortia

摘要: Most bacteria on earth live in heterogeneous surface-bound congregations called biofilms, and vast reaches of the are coated these living films. In many cases, microorganisms comprising this ubiquitous coating form complex, interactive communities consortia. Microbial consortia implicated processes great importance to humans, from environmental remediation wastewater treatment assistance food digestion. Synthetic biologists honing their ability program behavior individual microbial populations, forcing microbes focus specific applications, such as production drugs fuels. Given that can perform even more complicated tasks endure changeable environments than monocultures can, they represent an important new frontier for synthetic biology. This thesis describes two engineered designed functions biofilms. The biofilm consortium elucidated Chapter 2 serves a proof concept development symbiotic 3. To provide context consortia, first chapter highlights salient features interest reviews recent efforts engineer while final suggests challenges associated with future directions engineering