Niche Availability and Competitive Facilitation Control Proliferation of Bacterial Strains Intended for Soil Microbiome Interventions

Microbiome engineering, the rational manipulation of microbial communities and their habitats, is considered a crucial strategy to revert dysbiosis. However, the concept is in its infancy and lacks experimental support. Here we study the ecological factors controlling the proliferation of focal bacterial inoculants into taxa-complex soil communities and their impact on resident microbiota. We demonstrate using standardized soil microbiomes with different growth phases that the proliferation of typical soil inoculants depends on niche competition. By adding an artificial, inoculant selective niche to soil we improve inoculant proliferation and show by metatranscriptomics to give rise to a conjoint metabolic network in the soil microbiome. Furthermore, using random paired growth assays we demonstrate that, in addition to direct competition, inoculants lose competitiveness with soil bacteria because of metabolite sharing. Thus, the fate of inoculants in soil is controlled by niche availability and competitive facilitation, which may be manipulated by selective niche generation. TeaserTypical bacterial inoculants for soil microbiome engineering suffer from facilitating growth of native resident microorganisms