Herbicide degradation is driven by communication-mediated division of labor in synthetic communities

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The persistence of herbicide residues poses a major challenge to agricultural productivity and soil health in the Northeast Black Soil region of China. To address this, we employed a ‘top-down’ strategy to construct two synthetic microbial communities (SynComs YKB and HKB) which enhanced the co-degradation of multiple herbicides under both laboratory and soil conditions. Multi-omics analyses demonstrated that each SynCom functioned through a metabolic division of labor and utilized quorum sensing (QS) to regulate this metabolism. Specifically, Acyl-homoserine lactones governed the functional dynamics of YKB and autoinducer-2 primarily regulated HKB. QS molecules modulated stable microbial interactions and biodegradation through both direct and indirect regulatory effects. Maize pot experiments combined with metagenomic profiling demonstrated that the SynComs provided additional benefits for the soil ecosystem and confirmed the critical role of QS-mediated interactions between the SynComs and indigenous microorganisms. Overall, we present a bioaugmentation strategy to alleviate herbicide residues in soil ecosystems, offering insights into communication mechanisms, interaction models and design principles of SynComs for environmental bioremediation. Herbicide residues threaten soil health. Researchers constructed two SynComs that degrade multiple herbicides via quorum sensing-mediated metabolic division of labor, and maize pot trials verify their bioremediation efficacy.