Fig. 5: Miscroscopic compartmentalziation enhances bioactivities of microbial consortia.

a PAM scaffolds immobolize and segregate microbial consortia at microscopic space, which prevents competetive growth while enabling a more efficient mass transfer of metabolites between speceis. Circles and triangles represent metabolites secreted by microbes. b Cell-laden core-shell microgels are jammed and printed into scaffolds. Heterogeneous and homogeneous scaffolds are defined as: a mixed population of microgels containing two different microorganism species, respectively, and a homogeneous population of microgels containing a mixture of two microorganisms. c–e A mutualism model of microbial consortia. c Schematic representation of the relationship between Chlorella vulgaris and Bacillus subtilis. d Bioremediation of methyl orange by heterogeneous scaffolds, homogeneous scaffolds, and scaffolds immobilizing monocultures of microalgae and bacteria, respectively, n = 3 independent biological experiments. e Characterization of scaffold disintegration in 72 hours. The closed symbol marks an unbroken scaffold whereas open symbol scaffold markedly disintegrating. For all experiments, scaffolds are subjected to a cyclic 12:12 hour of light/darkness condition and incubated at 25 °C. f–h A competitive growth model of microbial consortia. f The synthetic microbial consortium of genetically engineered Escherichia Coli and Meyerozyma guilliermondii for producing 2-PE from glucose⁶⁰. Overexpressed genes are marked red. Crossed gene tyrA is knocked out. g The production of 2-PE from heterogeneous scaffolds over 6 days, which is normalized by respective scaffold weights, n = 3 independent biological experiments. h Comparison of bioprocessing in terms of normalized 2-PE production over 3 days, n = 3 independent biological experiments. *p = 0.021, n.s. = 0.069, unpaired two-tailed student’s t test. For both scaffolds, the production is normalized by corresponding scaffold weights; for liquid culture, CMC containing consortia is directly inoculated into media, the cell loading of which is the same as the scaffolds, and 2-PE production is normalized to average scaffolds weights of heterogeneous and homogeneous combined. Data are presented as mean values ± standard deviation and source data are provided as a Source Data file.