Cross-Feedings, Competition, and Positive and Negative Synergies in a Four-Species Synthetic Community for Anaerobic Degradation of Cellulose to Methane

Abstract

A synthetic community was designed using four microbial species that together performed distinct key metabolic processes in the anaerobic degradation of cellulose to methane and CO 2 . The microorganisms exhibited expected interactions, such as cross-feeding of acetate from a cellulolytic bacterium to an acetoclastic methanogen and competition of H 2 between a sulfate reducing bacterium and a hydrogenotrophic methanogen.