Designing and analyzing a synthetic community to mitigate ammonia emissions produced by livestock fecal microbiota

Summary

This research aims to reduce harmful ammonia gas released from livestock manure by using a designed mixture of helpful bacteria (a Synthetic Community, or SynCom). Applying these bacteria in the complex real world is difficult because the native manure microbes fight back, making the added SynCom unstable. This study outlines a plan to design a SynCom that can successfully live in manure and compete with the native gas-producing microbes. We then test how it interacts with the manure environment, work on improving it under pressure, and finally try using cheaper materials to make it practical for large-scale farm use. The significance of this work is to develop an effective solution to reduce air pollution from livestock farming.