Synthetic microbial communities enable sustainable restoration of coal gangue-impacted soils by reprogramming nutrient cycling.

Activity-oriented synthetic microbial communities restored nutrient cycling in coal gangue–impacted soils, with high-activity SynComs SC3 and SC5 driving distinct carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and diversity effects.

• Why it matters: Coal gangue reduces microbial diversity and disrupts nutrient cycling, and conventional bioremediation often underperforms in carbon-limited settings even after adding external carbon.
• What they did: The team built high-activity SynComs from native and non-native strains using activity and metabolite interaction criteria, then assessed community-level carbon use efficiency and nutrient-cycling outcomes with multi-omics, single-cell Raman spectroscopy, and field studies.
• The result: The native-derived SC3 enhanced carbon and nitrogen cycling, while the non-native-derived SC5 boosted diversity and phosphorus cycling (P < 0.05), implying activity-driven SynComs can outperform single amendments for restoring carbon-limited tailing ecosystems.

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