Temporal dynamics of synthetic consortia composed of 38 E. coli barcoded deletion strains grown in LB

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 rich media, where this interactions are not necessary for their growth. The experiment was carried out in six replicates diluting the co-cultures into fresh LB every 12 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.