PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Joaquín Gutiérrez
AU  - Sant Kumar
AU  - Mustafa Khammash
TI  - Dynamic cybergenetic control of bacterial co-culture composition via optogenetic feedback
AID  - 10.1101/2022.06.13.495893
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.06.13.495893
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/14/2022.06.13.495893.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/14/2022.06.13.495893.full
AB  - Communities of microbes play important roles in natural environments and hold great potential for deploying division-of-labor strategies in synthetic biology and bioproduction. However, the difficulty of controlling the composition of microbial consortia over time hinders their optimal use in many applications. Here, we present a fully automated, high-throughput platform that combines real-time measurements and computer-controlled optogenetic modulation of bacterial growth to implement precise and robust compositional control of a two-strain E. coli community. Additionally, we develop a general framework for dynamic modeling of synthetic genetic circuits in the physiological context of E. coli and use a host-aware model to determine the optimal control parameters of our closed-loop compositional control system. Our platform succeeds in stabilizing the strain ratio of multiple parallel co-cultures at arbitrary levels and in changing these targets over time, opening the door for the implementation of dynamic compositional programs in synthetic bacterial communities.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.