Sustainable production through spatial niche partitioning in engineered light-driven microbial community

Light-driven microbial communities consisting of phototrophs and heterotrophs represent an emerging frontier for biochemicals production from carbon dioxide (CO₂). However, the construction of stable and robust light-driven artificial microbial communities remains challenging because the dominant strain wins the competition for nutrient and leads to the instability of subpopulations. Inspired by natural ecosystems, one promising approach to assemble stable consortia is to construct spatial niches partitioning subpopulations-that is, physically separating different microbial members into distinct microenvironments to reduce competition and enable stable coexistence. Herein, a light-driven microbial community containing an autotrophic Synechococcus elongatus FL130 strain and a heterotrophic Meyerozyma guilliermondii strain was first constructed. Then, we developed spatially arranged core-shell microgels, enabling the precise control of subpopulations of different microbial members. Next, these microgels were integrated into macroscopic living material scaffold using extrusion bioprinting to advance bioprocessing applications, obtaining a well-coupled, robust and reusable light-driven microbial community. This resulted in a light-driven microbial communities with spatially compartmentalized distribution that can efficiently convert CO₂ into valuable chemical products of 2-phenylethanol and tyrosol, representing a pioneering approach for sustainable high-value biochemical production.