J. Diaz-Colunga

Full factorial construction of synthetic microbial communities

The paper introduces a low-cost method to assemble all possible combinations of microbial strains, demonstrating it with eight Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains to identify optimal consortia.

Predictability of the community-function landscape in wine yeast ecosystems

The paper predicts community function in wine yeast ecosystems by linking taxonomy to enological traits and showing quantitative rules govern strain contributions to fermentation.

Learning the functional landscape of microbial communities

The paper introduces community-function landscapes to predict microbial community functions from strain presence/absence, showing they can be accurately trained with limited data and are broadly applicable.

Environmental modulation of global epistasis is governed by effective genetic interactions

The paper shows that environmental factors, such as drug concentration, can significantly modulate global epistasis patterns in a four-mutation fitness landscape.

Global epistasis and the emergence of ecological function

This study shows that interspecies interactions in ecological communities lead to simple linear models predicting ecological function, analogous to global epistasis in genetics.

Diversity begets diversity under microbial niche construction

The paper shows microbial niche construction and cross-feeding promote positive diversity relationships in communities, dependent on metabolic interactions.

Top-down engineering of complex communities by directed evolution

This study develops a modeling framework to explore directed evolution strategies for engineering complex microbial communities, identifying effective methods to enhance their stability and functionality.