(67a) Design Principles to Establish an Aerobic and Anaerobic Bacterial Community

Bacteria are ubiquitous in both our body and our environment, and most often exist in complex, multi-species communities with varying levels of nutrient availability. One such example is the human gut: both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria live in harmony (or disharmony, in the case of infection) in our gut and experience spatially-varying concentrations of nutrients and oxygen. However, how such spatial variations influence, and are in turn influenced by, the spatial organization of these aerobic and anaerobic communities remains poorly understood. Here, we use a novel experimental system to explore the symbiotic relationship between Escherichia coli (a model aerobe) and Clostridium sporogenes (a model anaerobe). By linking experimental results to a simple theoretical model, we have developed design principles to create aerobic and anaerobic communities that can stably coexist. Our work thus provides a key step towards engineering "designer" three-dimensional bacterial communities.