Top-down and bottom-up microbiome engineering approaches to enable biomanufacturing from waste biomass

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology and Environmental Science
• Microbiology and Metabolic Engineering

Background:

• Growing environmental concerns necessitate waste valorization and circular economy principles.
• Microbial consortia are key to biomanufacturing valuable products from waste biomass, offering alternatives to petrochemicals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review advancements, challenges, and opportunities in microbiome engineering for waste valorization.
• To explore top-down and bottom-up approaches for designing and optimizing microbial consortia.

Main Methods:

• Discusses top-down approach: selective steering of existing consortia using environmental variables.
• Explores bottom-up approach: designing synthetic consortia based on known metabolic pathways and interactions.
• Highlights integration of both approaches and metabolic modeling for optimization.

Main Results:

• Characterization of microbial communities is advanced by high-throughput sequencing, yet disentangling interactions remains challenging.
• Bottom-up approach offers control but faces challenges in assembly and stability.
• Review presents strategies, tools, and opportunities for optimizing microbial consortia design and stability.

Conclusions:

• Microbiome engineering using microbial consortia is crucial for sustainable waste valorization and biomanufacturing.
• Both top-down and bottom-up strategies, alongside integrated approaches, are vital for efficient resource recovery.
• Further research is needed to overcome challenges in consortium assembly, stability, and predictive modeling.