Coexistence in microbial communities: Study challenges popular predictive rule

Microbial communities are widely used by biotechnology suppliers for processes like manufacturing biofuels and new foods, or helping crops grow better. To engineer successful communities, scientists need to predict whether microorganisms can live and work together. One popular predictive rule states that if a pair of microbes will coexist, they will also coexist in a bigger community of microbes. A study published in Science has now found that this simple rule will not always work.