Cell Growth Model with Stochastic Gene Expression Helps Understand the Growth Advantage of Metabolic Exchange and Auxotrophy.

ABSTRACT: During cooperative growth, microbes often experience higher fitness by sharing resources via metabolite exchange. How competitive species evolve to cooperate is, however, not known. Moreover, existing models (based on optimization of steady-state resources or fluxes) are often unable to explain the growth advantage for the cooperating species, even for simple reciprocally cross-feeding auxotrophic pairs. We present here an abstract model of cell growth that considers the stochastic burst-like gene expression of biosynthetic pathways of limiting biomass precursor metabolites and directly connect the amount of metabolite produced to cell growth and division, using a "metabolic sizer/adder" rule. Our model recapitulates Monod's law and yields the experimentally observed right-skewed long-tail

SUBMITTER: Dutta D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8407474 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature