Pervasive Selection for Cooperative Cross-Feeding in Bacterial Communities.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial communities are taxonomically highly diverse, yet the mechanisms that maintain this diversity remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that an obligate and mutual exchange of metabolites, as is very common among bacterial cells, could stabilize different genotypes within microbial communities. To test this, we developed a cellular automaton to model interactions among six empirically characterized genotypes that differ in their ability and propensity to produce amino acids. By systematically varying intrinsic (i.e. benefit-to-cost ratio) and extrinsic parameters (i.e. metabolite diffusion level, environmental amino acid availability), we show that obligate cross-feeding of essential metabolites is selected for under a broad range of conditions. In spatially structured environmen

SUBMITTER: Germerodt S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4912067 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature