Related papers: Tipping Elements in the Human Intestinal Ecosystem
A key unresolved question in microbial ecology is how the extraordinary diversity of microbiomes emerges from the behaviour of individual populations. This process is driven by the cross-feeding networks that structure these communities,…
The human gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem, in which hundreds of microbial species and metabolites coexist, in part due to an extensive network of cross-feeding interactions. However, both the large-scale trophic organization of this…
The intestinal microbiota plays important roles in digestion and resistance against entero-pathogens. As with other ecosystems, its species composition is resilient against small disturbances but strong perturbations such as antibiotics can…
Ecosystems tend to fluctuate around stable equilibria in response to internal dynamics and environmental factors. Occasionally, they enter an unstable tipping region and collapse into an alternative stable state. Our understanding of how…
The human gastrointestinal tract is an environment that hosts an ecosystem of microorganisms essential to human health. Vital biological processes emerge from fundamental inter- and intra-species molecular interactions that influence the…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in human health, yet the mechanisms underlying host-microbiome interactions remain unclear, limiting its translational potential. Recent microbiome multiomics studies, particularly paired…
Microbiome-based stratification of healthy individuals into compositional categories, referred to as "community types", holds promise for drastically improving personalized medicine. Despite this potential, the existence of community types…
Microbial communities routinely have several possible species compositions or community states observed for the same environmental parameters. Changes in these parameters can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions (regime shifts) between…
Model studies indicate that many climate subsystems, especially ecosystems, may be vulnerable to 'tipping': a 'catastrophic process' in which a system, driven by gradually changing external factors, abruptly transitions (or 'collapses')…
Gut microbial composition has been linked to multiple health outcomes. Yet, temporal analysis of this composition had been limited to deterministic models. In this paper, we introduce a probabilistic model for the dynamics of intestinal…
In many social mammals, early life social adversity and social integration largely predict individual health, lifespan and reproductive success. Efforts in identifying the physiological mechanisms mediating the relationship between the…
The human body consists of microbiomes associated with the development and prevention of several diseases. These microbial organisms form several complex interactions that are informative to the scientific community for explaining disease…
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics has long been an area of substantial interest to ecologists because most fundamental biological processes, such as protein synthesis and respiration, are inherently energy-consuming. Microbial communities are…
The tremendous boost in the next generation sequencing and in the omics technologies makes it possible to characterize human gut microbiome (the collective genomes of the microbial community that reside in our gastrointestinal tract). While…
Topology transcends boundaries that conventionally delineate physical, biological and engineering sciences. Our ability to mathematically describe topology, combined with our access to precision tracking and manipulation approaches, has…
Tipping points are one of the hot topics in modern physics of complex systems. But what is a tipping point? A generic definition declares it as ``a state of the system where a small change in its parameters can lead to a significant change…
Experimental studies of microbial communities routinely reveal that they have multiple stable states. While each of these states is generally resilient, certain perturbations such as antibiotics, probiotics and diet shifts, result in…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…