Investigating metabolic interactions in a microbial co-culture through integrated modelling and experiments.

ABSTRACT: Microbial co-cultures have been used in several biotechnological applications. Within these co-cultures, the microorganisms tend to interact with each other and perform complex actions. Investigating metabolic interactions in microbial co-cultures is crucial in designing microbial consortia. Here, we present a pipeline integrating modelling and experimental approaches to understand metabolic interactions between organisms in a community. We define a new index named "Metabolic Support Index (MSI)", which quantifies the benefits derived by each organism in the presence of the other when grown as a co-culture. We computed MSI for several experimentally demonstrated co-cultures and showed that MSI, as a metric, accurately identifies the organism that derives the maximum benefit. We also comput

SUBMITTER: Ravikrishnan A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7286961 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature