Fig. 1.
A synthetic community of three bacterial species requires spatial structure to maintain stable coexistence. (A) A schematic drawing of the wild-type soil bacteria and their functions used to create a synthetic community with syntrophic interactions. (B) Graphs show the survival ratio of each species (N/No) as a function of time when cultured in well-mixed conditions in a test tube in nutrient-rich TSB/1771 (Left) and nutrient-poor CP (Right) media, indicating instability of the community under spatially unstructured conditions. (C) A schematic drawing of the microfluidic device used to co-culture the three species stably by imposing spatial structure with three culture wells and a communication channel.