Describing the persistence landscape for introducing microbes into complex communities

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Ecology
• Synthetic Biology

Background:

• Introducing non-native organisms into microbial communities offers significant potential but faces hurdles in establishment, persistence, and containment.
• Predicting the success of introduced organisms is crucial for harnessing the benefits of engineered microbial communities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the
• persistence landscape
• framework to predict the fitness of engineered organisms in target microbiomes.
• To enable controlled introduction of desired taxa and phenotypes for various applications.

Main Methods:

• The study proposes a conceptual framework based on ecological principles.
• The framework defines the "persistence landscape" as the functional composition of a target microbiome.
• This composition is analyzed to predict the promotion or discouragement of engineered organism persistence.

Main Results:

• The "persistence landscape" framework provides a predictive tool for organism establishment.
• It helps understand the factors within a microbiome that influence the success of introduced species.

Conclusions:

• The "persistence landscape" concept offers a novel approach to managing engineered microbial communities.
• This framework can guide the controlled introduction of organisms to address challenges in agronomy, biomanufacturing, and human health.