Microbiome engineering strategies in different application scenarios

Abstract:

Microbiomes have great application potential in industry, agriculture, environment, health, etc. In practice, it is still difficult to construct efficient and stable microbiomes and utilize the engineered microbiomes in various application fields. To summarize and analyze the construction strategies of microbiomes, thus facilitating the engineering of microbiomes for application in different scenarios. We first classified the application scenarios of microbiomes into closed, semi-closed, and open systems according to the application requirements and then reviewed the existing microbiome construction strategies in the three systems, especially focusing on their characteristics and limitations. Finally, according to the characteristics of different systems and the empirical feedback from practical applications, we proposed the microbiome construction strategies. In the closed system, the microbiome is mainly synthesized by the bottom-up method, which has high requirements for microbial individual information and microbiome efficiency. In semi-closed and open systems, the microbiome is constructed by top-down and bottom-up methods, which require high stability and safety of the microbiome. In diverse application scenarios, the strategies and focuses of constructing microbiomes are different, and appropriate strategies could be chosen to construct efficient microbiomes according to the actual situations.