Temporal dynamics of synthetic consortia composed of 38 E. coli barcoded deletion strains grown in nutrient-poor media

38 E. coli barcoded deletion strains that are not able to grow in nutrient-poor media were used to evaluate whether an assembly of strains that are co-cultured together will coalesce into a co-dependent strain group that is stabilized by cross-feeding interactions when grown in nutrient-poor media, where these interactions are necessary for their growth. The experiment was carried out in six replicates diluting the co-cultures into fresh nutrient-poor media every 24 hours for 14 cycles. The barcoded regions were amplified in samples from day 1, 3, 7 and 14, and this barcode amplicon product was used for Illumina NGS.