Microbial consortia are ubiquitous in nature

in which multiple microbial species cooperate to complete some important tasks such as lignocellulose degradation. Because of the advantages such as reduced metabolic burden and robustness to environment disturbances

developing a microbial consortium is a promising approach for valuable product synthesis

lignocellulose utilization

human health care

bioremediation and sustainable energy

etc

. Despite the benefits

however

most artificial microbial consortia confront the problems of instability and low efficiency due to growth competition and metabolite incompatibility. To overcome these challenges

multiple strategies to design efficient synthetic microbial consortia have been reported. In this review

the interactions that determine the stability and performance of microbial consortia were described. Progress of artificial microbial consortia research was summarized

and the key strategies

i.e

.

spatial or temporal segregation

separated utilization of nutrients

nutrient cross-feeding and division of labor

that will be of great importance for achieving a stable and efficient microbial consortium were highlighted. Two novel

advanced tools

signaling molecule systems and computational models

were also introduced and discussed. We believed that combining the universal cell–cell signaling molecule systems with computational models will be promising for synthetic microbial consortia construction in the future.