Designing Metabolic Division of Labor in Microbial Communities
Abstract
Understanding how microbes assemble into communities is a fundamental open issue in biology, relevant to human health, metabolic engineering, and environmental sustainability. A possible mechanism for interactions of microbes is through cross-feeding, i.e., the exchange of small molecules. These metabolic exchanges may allow different microbes to specialize in distinct tasks and evolve division of labor. To systematically explore the space of possible strategies for division of labor, we applied advanced optimization algorithms to computational models of cellular metabolism. Specifically, we searched for communities able to survive under constraints (such as a limited number of reactions) that would not be sustainable by individual species. We found that predicted consortia partition metabolic pathways in ways that would be difficult to identify manually, possibly providing a competitive advantage over individual organisms. In addition to helping understand diversity in natural microbial communities, our approach could assist in the design of synthetic consortia.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Apr 30, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1128/msystems.00263-18
Entities
People
- Daniel Segrè
- Ioannis C. Paschalidis
- Meghan Thommes
- Qi Zhao
- Taiyao Wang
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Boston University
- National Science Foundation
- National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka
- Office of Biological and Environmental Research
- Office of Naval Research