Developing theory on the formation, composition and structure of open microbial communities that can be used in engineering design

大型多物种微生物群落被用于广泛的历史悠久和新兴技术，如废水处理、生物修复和使用微生物燃料电池从废水中发电。然而，人们对自然环境中大型群落的聚集或集合，以及一旦集合后其组成和结构的波动，仍然知之甚少。一些较为成熟的技术，如废水处理，之所以取得显著成功，主要是因为通过多年的研究和应用积累了丰富的经验知识。然而，这种基于经验的技术进化的气候，使得难以从不同环境中的类似战略中翻译任何见解。此外，由于我们无法量化微生物群落组装中的常见和关键过程以及群落组成、结构和功能之间的关系，工业对新技术的采用速度减慢。因此，令人满意的数学描述的微生物世界，现在成功地工程微生物系统的瓶颈。预测和操纵微生物群落组成和结构的理论基础将有广泛的应用：在新的理论基础上建立既定的实践;量化新兴环境生物技术的风险;并可能开辟全新的技术。这项高级奖学金申请中提出的研究旨在建立在以前成功模拟微生物群落组装的基础上，并为生物废物处理系统的微生物学开发进一步的定量，可测试的理论。

Large multi-species communities of microbes are exploited in a wide range of long-established and newly emerging technologies, such as wastewater treatment, bioremediation and electricity generation from wastewater using microbial fuel cells. However, the coming together, or assembly, of large communities in natural environments and the fluctuations in their composition and structure, once assembled, is still poorly understood. The remarkable success of some of the more established technologies, such as wastewater treatment, can largely be attributed to the wealth of empirical knowledge that has been built up through many years of research and application. However, such a climate of empirically based technological evolution, makes difficult the translation of any insights from similar strategies in different environments. Furthermore, industry's adoption of new technologies is slowed by our inability to quantify both the common and key processes in microbial community assembly and the relationships between community composition, structure and function. Therefore, satisfactory mathematical descriptions of the microbial world are now the bottleneck in successfully engineering microbiological systems. A theoretical basis for predicting and manipulating microbial community composition and structure will have a wide application: setting established practices on a new theoretical foundation; quantifying the risk in emerging environmental biotechnologies; and potentially opening up whole new technologies. The research proposed in this Advanced Fellowship application aims to build upon previous successes in modelling microbial community assembly and develop further quantitative, testable theories for the microbiology of biological waste treatment systems.