{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"bioRxiv"}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,27]],"date-time":"2026-05-27T23:02:43Z","timestamp":1779922963871,"version":"3.53.1"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,25]]},"group-title":"Microbiology","reference-count":36,"publisher":"openRxiv","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,25]],"date-time":"2026-05-25T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1779667200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,25]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>ABSTRACT<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>\n                  The complexity of the gut microbiome has made it challenging to define the role of individual species in community-level function. Here, we constructed 56 single-strain dropout variants of a defined 118-member community and used each one to colonize a group of germ-free mice. In many cases, removing a single strain triggered a large reordering of a small group of species, which in turn altered the community\u2019s metabolic output.\n                  <jats:italic>En bloc<\/jats:italic>\n                  removal of the eight-strain acetogen compartment markedly reduced acetate production and caused intestinal H\n                  <jats:sub>2<\/jats:sub>\n                  accumulation and bloating; a specific subset of four acetogens was sufficient to relieve bloating and restore acetate production. Together, these data show that small disturbances in community composition can trigger a confined ecological reorganization with a large chemical phenotype, and they reveal novel strategies for engineering communities with altered metabolic output.\n                <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.64898\/2026.05.23.727446","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,25]],"date-time":"2026-05-25T17:20:16Z","timestamp":1779729616000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["A single-strain dropout screen reveals mechanistic links between microbial ecology and metabolism"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9593-3388","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xianfeng","family":"Zeng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA"},{"name":"ChEM-H Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, 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