Related papers: Sustainable Diversity of Phage-Bacteria Systems
Bacteria and their bacteriophages are the most abundant, widespread and diverse groups of biological entities on the planet. In an attempt to understand how the interactions between bacteria, virulent phages and temperate phages might…
Bacteriophages are viruses infecting bacteria and archaea. Many phage species cause infections which lead to the certain death of the infected prokaryotic host cell and the release of a large batch of phage progeny, yet they have been able…
Bacteriophage-bacteria interactions are central to microbial ecology, influencing evolution, biogeochemical cycles, and pathogen behavior. Most theoretical models assume static environments and passive bacterial hosts, neglecting the joint…
Phages use bacterial host resources to replicate, intrinsically linking phage and host survival. To understand phage dynamics, it is essential to understand phage-host ecology. A key step in this ecology is infection of bacterial hosts.…
Bacteria and their viruses ("bacteriophages") coexist in natural environments forming complex infection networks. Recent empirical findings suggest that phage-bacteria infection networks often possess a nested structure such that there is a…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
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…
Phage therapy is an alternative treatment method for bacterial infections. It has shown particular promise in reducing bacterial load while preventing antibiotic resistance. Here, we develop a mathematical model of a bacterial infection…
Pathogen-mediated competition, through which an invasive species carrying and transmitting a pathogen can be a superior competitor to a more vulnerable resident species, is one of the principle driving forces influencing biodiversity in…
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…
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…
Microbes thrive in diverse porous environments -- from soil and riverbeds to human lungs and cancer tissues -- spanning multiple scales and conditions. Short- to long-term fluctuations in local factors induce spatio-temporal…
In a wide variety of natural systems, closely-related microbial strains coexist stably, resulting in high levels of fine-scale biodiversity. However, the mechanisms that stabilize this coexistence are not fully understood. Spatial…
Phages are one of the most present groups of organisms in the biosphere. Their identification continues and their taxonomies are divergent. However, due to their evolution mode and the complexity of their species ecosystem, their…
We demonstrate diversification rather than optimisation for highly interacting organisms in a well mixed biological system by means of a simple model and reference to experiment, and find the cause to be the complex network of interactions…
Phagocytosis is the process by which cells, which are 5 to 10 times larger than the particle size, engulf particles, holding substantial importance in various biological contexts ranging from the nutrient uptake of unicellular organisms to…
Bacteriophages (phages) are key regulators of bacterial populations and hold great promise for applications such as phage therapy, biocontrol, and industrial fermentation. The success of these applications depends on accurately determining…
Microbes providing public goods are widespread in nature despite running the risk of being exploited by free-riders. However, the precise ecological factors supporting cooperation are still puzzling. Following recent experiments, we…
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…
Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…