A paper in Microorganisms by former postdoc, Jessica Lee, now a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, came out earlier this year describing her development of a synthetic community that could degrade model plant-derived compounds. She uncovered myriad metabolic interactions that arose, including formaldehyde toxicity from vanillic acid conversion that poisoned one community member but could be mitigated by inclusion of Methylorubrum extorquens PA1.
