Deciphering fungal-microbial interactions: From microscale experimental models to integrative systems biology.

Integrative systems biology approaches enable rational engineering of fungal-microbial consortia for ecosystem and industrial applications.

• Why it matters: Understanding and controlling fungal-microbial interactions is crucial for harnessing their ecosystem functions and bio-economy potential, but their complexity hampers application development.
• What they did: The review discusses technological advances from 1:1 dialogue studies to microfluidic platforms, synthetic endosymbiosis, and integration of multi-omics with AI-driven modeling to design consortia.
• The result: These approaches facilitate iterative optimization of community composition and function, advancing reproducibility, scalability, and controllability for practical uses in agriculture, environment, and industry.