Environmental and Engineered Microbiomes for Industrial Impact

Microbial communities are increasingly recognized as programmable biological systems capable of driving industrial and environmental processes at scale. From bioenergy production and waste valorization to bioremediation and precision bioprocess control, engineered and naturally occurring microbiomes offer sustainable alternatives to conventional chemical and energy-intensive methods. Advances in multi-omics profiling, integrated with systems modeling and synthetic biology, now allow researchers to move beyond descriptive community surveys toward the rational design and optimization of microbial consortia for defined industrial outcomes.

This Research Topic aims to capture the growing convergence of environmental microbiology, systems biology, and bioengineering in addressing real-world industrial challenges. We welcome contributions that explore how integrative, omics-guided approaches can be used to characterize, engineer, and scale up microbiome-based solutions for sustainability and circular bioeconomy applications.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Microbiome engineering for bioenergy production and waste-to-value conversion
• Integrative Omics-guided design and optimization of microbial consortia for bioremediation
• Systems-level modeling of environmental and engineered microbial communities
• Bioprocess monitoring and control strategies informed by microbiome dynamics
• Integrative Synthetic biology approaches to enhance microbial community function and stability
• Case studies on scale-up of microbiome-based industrial applications
• Tools and computational frameworks for functional characterization of complex microbial systems

We welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Methods, and Perspective articles.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: microbiome engineering, microbial consortia, systems biology, synthetic biology, multi-omics, bioremediation, bioenergy production, waste valorization, circular bioeconomy, bioprocess control

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.