Fig 1. Simplified representation for the construction of the model for the co-culture experiments.

Each microbial species is taken as a compartment and interacts through the pool of metabolite concentrations. The latter metabolites, along with the biomass concentrations, define the state of the process, while the cybernetic variables that regulate the participation of the different ODEs related to the metabolic pathways in each cell define the metabolic state of each microorganism.