Related papers: Bacterial cartels at steady supply
We derive a single-cell level understanding of metabolism in an isogenic cyanobacterial population by integrating secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) derived multi-isotope uptake measurements of Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 with a…
Proliferation is a defining feature of life. Through growth, division, and death, living systems consume energy and inject mass, breaking conservation laws and driving collective phenomena from biofilm formation to embryonic development.…
The relationships between diversity, productivity and scale determine much of the structure and robustness of complex biological and social systems. While arguments for the link between specialization and productivity are common, diversity…
A common assumption employed in most previous works on evolutionary game dynamics is that every individual player has full knowledge about and full access to the complete set of available strategies. In realistic social, economical, and…
Bacterial cells navigate around their environment by directing their movement along chemical gradients. This process, known as chemotaxis, can promote the rapid expansion of bacterial populations into previously unoccupied territories.…
We present a simple mathematical model that captures the evolutionary capabilities of a prebiotic compartment or protocell. In the model the protocell contains an autocatalytic set whose chemical dynamics is coupled to the growth-division…
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…
Many of the chemical reactions that take place within a living cell are irreversible. Due to evolutionary pressures, the number of allowable reactions within these systems are highly constrained and thus the resulting metabolic networks…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
Living organisms produce metabolites of many types via their metabolisms. Especially, flavonoids, a kind of secondary metabolites, of plant species are interesting examples. Since plant species are believed to have specific flavonoids with…
Cooperation is a difficult proposition in the face of Darwinian selection. Those that defect have an evolutionary advantage over cooperators who should therefore die out. However, spatial structure enables cooperators to survive through the…
The intratumor heterogeneity has been recognized to characterize cancer cells impairing the efficacy of cancer treatments. We here propose an extension of constraint-based modeling approach in order to simulate metabolism of cell…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
Metagenomics has lowered the barrier to microbial discovery--enabling the identification of novel microbes without isolation--but cultures remain imperative for the deep study of microbes. Cultivation and isolation of non-model microbes…
Two species with similar resource requirements respond in a characteristic way to variations in their habitat -- their abundances rise and fall in concert. We use this idea to learn how bacterial populations in the microbiota respond to…
Recent work suggests that cross-feeding -- the secretion and consumption of metabolic biproducts by microbes -- is essential for understanding microbial ecology. Yet how cross-feeding and competition combine to give rise to ecosystem-level…
This paper presents karma mechanisms, a novel approach to the repeated allocation of a scarce resource among competing agents over an infinite time. Examples include deciding which ride hailing trip requests to serve during peak demand,…
We solve a simple model that supports a dynamic phase transition and show conditions for the existence of the transition. Using methods of large deviation theory we analytically compute the probability distribution for activity and entropy…
Bacterial resistance to antibiotic treatment is a huge concern: introduction of any new antibiotic is shortly followed by the emergence of resistant bacterial isolates in the clinic. This issue is compounded by a severe lack of new…
Local coexistence of species in large ecosystems is traditionally explained within the broad framework of niche theory. However, its rationale hardly justifies rich biodiversity observed in nearly homogeneous environments. Here we consider…