Micro-organisms are rarely found to live in isolation in their natural environment. Organisms are found to co-exist in many scenarios, functioning in consolidated and socialising communities. The growing availability of high-throughput sequencing techniques and developments in the field of metagenomics have enabled the generation of large amounts of data about microbial communities. Despite this, sparingly little knowledge is available about the principles governing these ecosystems and interactions among component organisms. The microbial communities have immense unexplored potential – be it in bioprocessing, bioremediation, therapeutics etc.
