“Communities of Niche-Optimized Strains: Small-Genome Organism Consortia in Bioproduction” – article published in Trends in Biotechnology

Genome reduction is a common, natural phenomenon of bacterial organisms. Evolutionary adaptations of bacteria to life in cell networks with appropriate division of labor lead to an optimization of the cell-specific metabolism, followed by a reduction of genetic resources to a minimum. Interestingly, this fundamental finding has hardly been used in the work already carried out in the field of synthetic biology. Although the emphasis was on genome reduction to create novel chassis organisms, autonomous growth was a fundamental criterion.

The review article "Communities of Niche-Optimized Strains: Small-Genome Organism Consortia in Bioproduction", recently published in the renowned journal "Trends in Biotechnology", compares the current state of knowledge and, as a result, develops an alternative concept for the development of improved microbial production processes. The article was selected as a freely accessible feature and at the same time adorns the cover of the February issue of 2019.

The article is available online:
https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(18)30202-6