{"title":"Evolution and stability of complex microbial communities driven by trade-offs.","authors":"Yanqing Huang, Avik Mukherjee, Severin Schink, Nina Catherine Benites, Markus Basan","doi":"10.1038/s44320-024-00051-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Microbial communities are ubiquitous in nature and play an important role in ecology and human health. Cross-feeding is thought to be core to microbial communities, though it remains unclear precisely why it emerges. Why have multi-species microbial communities evolved in many contexts and what protects microbial consortia from invasion? Here, we review recent insights into the emergence and stability of coexistence in microbial communities. A particular focus is the long-term evolutionary stability of coexistence, as observed for microbial communities that spontaneously evolved in the E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE). We analyze these findings in the context of recent work on trade-offs between competing microbial objectives, which can constitute a mechanistic basis for the emergence of coexistence. Coexisting communities, rather than monocultures of the 'fittest' single strain, can form stable endpoints of evolutionary trajectories. Hence, the emergence of coexistence might be an obligatory outcome in the evolution of microbial communities. This implies that rather than embodying fragile metastable configurations, some microbial communities can constitute formidable ecosystems that are difficult to disrupt.</p>","PeriodicalId":18906,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Systems Biology","volume":" ","pages":"997-1005"},"PeriodicalIF":8.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11369148/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Molecular Systems Biology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s44320-024-00051-8","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/7/3 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Microbial communities are ubiquitous in nature and play an important role in ecology and human health. Cross-feeding is thought to be core to microbial communities, though it remains unclear precisely why it emerges. Why have multi-species microbial communities evolved in many contexts and what protects microbial consortia from invasion? Here, we review recent insights into the emergence and stability of coexistence in microbial communities. A particular focus is the long-term evolutionary stability of coexistence, as observed for microbial communities that spontaneously evolved in the E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE). We analyze these findings in the context of recent work on trade-offs between competing microbial objectives, which can constitute a mechanistic basis for the emergence of coexistence. Coexisting communities, rather than monocultures of the 'fittest' single strain, can form stable endpoints of evolutionary trajectories. Hence, the emergence of coexistence might be an obligatory outcome in the evolution of microbial communities. This implies that rather than embodying fragile metastable configurations, some microbial communities can constitute formidable ecosystems that are difficult to disrupt.
期刊介绍:
Systems biology is a field that aims to understand complex biological systems by studying their components and how they interact. It is an integrative discipline that seeks to explain the properties and behavior of these systems.
Molecular Systems Biology is a scholarly journal that publishes top-notch research in the areas of systems biology, synthetic biology, and systems medicine. It is an open access journal, meaning that its content is freely available to readers, and it is peer-reviewed to ensure the quality of the published work.