Synthetic biology is developing from designing and building functional parts and modules to re-designing an artificial cell and constructing synthetic microbial consortia. Synthetic microbial consortium represents the tendency of synthetic biology. This review summarizes recent advances in engineering microbial consortia
including basic ecological relationships
spatio-temporal dynamics and distributed computations. In addition
microbial consortia play an indispensible role in the areas of medicine
environment and energy. Synthetic microbial consortia also have great potential in these relevant areas.