Seeding the idea of encapsulating a representative synthetic metagenome in a single yeast cell

Abstract

Synthetic metagenomics could potentially unravel the complexities of microbial ecosystems by revealing the simplicity of microbial communities captured in a single cell. Conceptionally, a yeast cell carrying a representative synthetic metagenome could uncover the complexity of multi-species interactions, illustrated here with wine ferments.

Fig. 1. The idea of encapsulating the complexity of a natural yeast community with a representative synthetic metagenome.

This concept explores the potential to reproduce a whole ecosystem’s metabolic network in a single yeast cell.

Fig. 2. General figures about the core fungal community of wine fermentations, estimated from the regional dataset by Liu et al. (raw data publicly available at PRJNA594469).

A As the dominant species in wine fermentations, Saccharomyces cerevisiae abundance has a strong impact in the diversity of fungal communities. B The structure of an inter-species correlation network defines some keystone taxa with a strong potential role in community functioning. Nodes in the network are sized based on their keystone score—calculated as an average of their Mean Degree, Closeness Centrality, and Betweenness Centrality values. Those nodes with higher keystone scores (>0.75) are highlighted as yellow spheres representing keystone taxa. Positive and negative correlations between the abundance of S. cerevisiae (orange node) and other core taxa are highlighted with red and blue edges, respectively. C The taxonomy of the keystone community includes both Ascomycetous and Basidiomycetous fungi including some yeasts, yeast-like and filamentous fungi. The particular insights depicted here came from a regional dataset of Australian wine fermentations, but a wider meta-analysis is needed for defining the actual global core mycobiome of wine fermentations and the expectable regional terroir-associated particularities.