Co-cultures and synthetic microbial communities for green chemical production

Division of labor is a basic principle for the success of microbial life on Earth. We are currently only beginning to understand the complexity of natural microbial communities. However, it becomes immediately clear that many of the discovered principles would be quite useful for industrial microbiology, aiming at the provision of sustainable chemicals. Stable microbial communities can be seen as environmentally benign selfreplicating enzymatic catalysts. They are therefore a promising tool for green chemistry and deserve proper attention. Here, we set out to show some successful examples of more than one microbial species working together in a chemical process and we point to some of the open questions.