Asymmetric metabolic adaptations undermine stability in microbial syntrophy.

ABSTRACT: Syntrophic interaction, driven by metabolite exchange, is widespread within microbial communities. However, co-inoculation of most auxotrophic microorganisms often fails to establish a stable metabolite exchange relationship. Here, we engineered two auxotrophic Escherichia coli strains, each dependent on the other for essential amino acid production, to investigate the dynamics of syntrophic relationships. Through invasion-from-rare experiments, we observed the rapid formation of syntrophic consortia stabilized by frequency-dependent selection, converging to a 2:1 ratio of lysine-to-arginine auxotrophs. However, laboratory evolution over 25 days revealed that syntrophic interactions were evolutionarily unstable, with cocultures collapsing as ΔL cells dominated the population. Reduce

SUBMITTER: Ye N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11815887 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature