Systems approaches to unravel interspecies interactions in microbial communities

Microorganisms form diverse communities that have a profound impact on the environment and on human health. These partnerships often involve consumption of carbon compounds that cannot be used by any individual organism, but yield sufficient energy for growth when paired organisms couple their metabolic capabilities. These associations are critical to carbon decomposition processes and are particularly important in oxygen-limited environments such as wetlands and sediments, but also in parts of the human microbiome. We developed a novel genome-scale, multi-omics based modeling approach to investigate the systems biology of syntrophic microbial partnerships to shed new light on a poorly understood aspect of carbon cycle processes. We determined the multidimensional interactions that define the composition of microbial communities and thus control carbon and energy flux through the system while simultaneously contributing overall community robustness. The work represents a significant advance in our ability to extend genome-scale systems biology modeling approaches to multispecies microbial consortia.