Unlocking the potential of defined co-cultures for industrial biotechnology: Opportunities and challenges
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Large-scale microbial-biotechnology processes for production of chemicals almost exclusively rely on pure cultures of microbial strains. Especially for extensively engineered pure cultures, process performance can be negatively affected, which can be caused by issues such as pathway imbalance, deterioration of productivity caused by genetic instability and enzyme promiscuity. An increasing number of studies demonstrate that, under ‘academic’ laboratory conditions, the use of defined co-cultures (i.e. deliberate mixtures of known microbial strains) offers unique possibilities for mitigating such drawbacks. These advantages differ for dissimilatory products, whose synthesis from one or more carbon substrates provides cells with free energy, and assimilatory products, whose synthesis requires a net input of free energy. Based on advances in experimental and theoretical research, this paper highlights how defined co-cultures can address several limitations of mono-cultures for production of low-molecular-weight compounds. From this largely academic perspective, we outline the key challenges for scaling these systems to industry, which underscore the need for innovative solutions and continued research in this area. • Defined co-cultures can improve dissimilatory and assimilatory product formation • Substrate-specialist co-cultures prevent deteriorating mixed-substrate utilization • Co-cultures can circumvent enzyme promiscuity by physical segregation • Modularization of product pathways in co-cultures can prevent pathway imbalance • Assessment of co-culture applicability requires dedicated experimental design
Source: New Biotechnology
Authors: Sagarika B. Govindaraju, Tobias Fecker, Michelle Rossouw, Jack T. Pronk, Rinke J. van Tatenhove-Pel
Institution: Delft University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,670
OpenAlex ID: W4416827220