Managing microbial interactions in environmental biotechnology: can we scale interaction principles?

Managing microbial interactions in complex communities can be scaled effectively by focusing on key ecological and functional factors, enabling better environmental biotechnology outcomes.

• Why it matters: Understanding and controlling microbial interactions is crucial for sustainable practices like waste upcycling and bioremediation, but current methods often fail due to the complexity and context-dependence of these interactions.
• What they did: The authors review how insights from simplified communities can be applied to complex systems by emphasizing relevant scales, ecological constraints, and targeted traits, using a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches.
• The result: This integrated strategy offers a pathway to diagnose failures and design resilient microbial processes, advancing the practical management of microbial interactions for environmental benefits.