Light-driven synthetic microbial consortia: playing with an oxygen dilemma

Abstract

Background: Light-driven synthetic microbial consortia are composed of photoautotrophs and heterotrophs. They exhibited better performance in stability, robustness and capacity for handling complex tasks when comparing with axenic cultures. Different from general microbial consortia, the intrinsic property of photosynthetic oxygen evolution in light-driven synthetic microbial consortia is an important factor affecting the functions of the consortia.

Results: In light-driven microbial consortia, the oxygen liberated by photoautotrophs will result in an aerobic environment, which exerts dual effects on different species and processes. On one hand, oxygen is favorable to the synthetic microbial consortia when they are used for wastewater treatment and aerobic chemical production, in which biomass accumulation and oxidized product formation will benefit from the high energy yield of aerobic respiration. On the other hand, the oxygen is harmful to the synthetic microbial consortia when they were used for anaerobic processes including biohydrogen production and bioelectricity generation, in which the presence of oxygen will deactivate some biological components and compete for electrons.

Conclusions: Developing anaerobic processes in using light-driven synthetic microbial consortia represents a cost-effective alternative for production of chemicals from carbon dioxide and light. Thus, exploring a versatile approach addressing the oxygen dilemma is essential to enable light-driven synthetic microbial consortia to get closer to practical applications.

Author summary

Oxygen plays a significant role affecting the functions of synthetic microbial consortia. In a light-driven synthetic microbial consortium, the compacted space makes heterotrophs easily access to the oxygen produced by photoautotrophs. Thus, the sensitivity and requirement of oxygen for heterotrophs involved in a light-driven microbial consortium determines the overall performance of the process. Once an obligate anaerobe or an anaerobic metabolic process was introduced, the oxygen must be isolated from heterotrophs to avoid oxygen inactivation and oxygen respiration. This article discussed how to play with the oxygen dilemma in light-driven synthetic microbial consortia to maximize the performance of the systems.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

synthetic microbial consortia / oxygen dilemma / photosynthesis

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32201194), the Projects funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. BX20220333 and 2022M710161) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDPB18).

COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICS GUIDELINES

The authors Huawei Zhu and Yin Li declare that they have no conflict of interests.

This article is a review article and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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