Speaker
Description
There is growing interest in designing microbial communities that perform collective functions, with potential applications ranging from human health to pollutant degradation and crop production. However, attempts to artificially select communities have reported limited success, with modest improvements in performance and a lack of ecological or evolutionary stability.
Here, we approach this challenge from an organismal perspective. We propose that microbial communities can be engineered to behave more like integrated organisms by imposing a coordinated stress response as a required feature. We develop a theoretical framework to describe microbial populations interacting under selection for community-level traits. Using differential equation models, we analyze the stability and dynamics of multi-species communities subjected to perturbations.
We identify common sources of instability and derive a set of minimal trait requirements for engineering communities that maintain their function. In particular, stress responses at the community level can stabilize functional outputs despite environmental fluctuations or shifts in species abundances. Our results suggest potential design principles for the construction of microbial communities with more stable and reliable collective behavior.
