Beyond pure cultivation: A holistic view on construction, interaction, and application of microbial consortia

Microorganisms in nature tend to form alliances relying on network interactions among species to collaboratively drive ecological functions, rather than existing as separate populations. Microbial Consortia, featuring exceptional adaptation, metabolic synergy, and environmental application potential, have attracted great attention in fields of environmental microbiology and synthetic ecology. However, unstable cultivation strategies, elusive mechanisms of interspecies interactions, and environmental heterogeneity immensely restrict its applications. To successfully cultivate a flexible microbial consortium, one must comprehensively understand its cultivation strategies, interaction mechanisms, and environmental application scopes. Hence, in this review, the advanced research involved key abiotic and biotic factors that play important roles in microbial consortia assembly is updated in detail. Subsequently, the multidimensional interspecies interaction networks that can regulate energy-matter-information exchange are systematically elucidated. Furthermore, the functional applications are distinctly identified and catalogued based on various environmental case studies. Particularly, some enhanced strategies are first proposed to address the existing issues in co-cultivation, molecular mechanisms, and environmental applications. Finally, the future challenges and research directions are put forward. This review is expected to be beneficial in promoting microbial consortia studies.